Diageo launched the Flora & Fauna range in 1991, a single quiet bottling from each of two dozen working malt distilleries that had spent their entire commercial lives feeding blends. The labels — each illustrated with a local bird, beast or wildflower — turned a marketing problem (too many anonymous distilleries) into the most useful reference set in single malt. Inchgower was always one of the more interesting entries because its house character is unlike anything else in the Diageo stable.
Inchgower stands at Buckie on the Moray Firth, founded in 1871 by Alexander Wilson, who moved his operation down from the older Tochineal distillery a few miles east. Wilson went bankrupt in 1936 and Buckie Town Council, of all unlikely owners, bought the distillery for £1,000 — making it briefly the only municipally owned Scotch distillery in history. Arthur Bell & Sons took it on in 1938, and Inchgower has been a Bell's fillings malt ever since. The proximity to the sea, and the use of unusually short, fat stills, gives the spirit a saline, herbal, slightly oily quality that blenders treasure.
The 14 Year Old F&F is the only standard official bottling and shows why Inchgower has its quiet reputation. The salinity is real, not imagined, and the herbal twang is unmistakable. It is not a polite Speysider; it is the Moray coast in liquid form, and increasingly hard to find now that Diageo has trimmed the range.
