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Craigellachie 13 Year Bas-Armagnac

While Craigellachie exists in the Speyside region of Scotland, the distillery has long been proud of forging its own style that doesn’t always match up with its neighbors, whether that means using heritage equipment from a bygone era or adding a new twist to the production process. A new entrant into distillery’s core line of offerings, the Craigellachie Bas-Armagnac takes the distillery’s core 13 year single malt and finishes it for over a year in casks from Gascony that once held Bas-Armagnac. Translated as Lower Armagnac, it is a region in southwestern France along the border with Spain. Grapes grown in this region are blended into a specific style of brandy that uses column stills in the distillation rather than the pot stills often used in cognac production. The Bas-Armagnac region accounts for about 60% of all Armagnac production.

By Adam | February 20, 2024 | Speyside | No Comments |

Bunnahabhain was founded in 1881 and was for its first several decades only received supplies by sea. Interestingly, the village of Bunnahabhain itself was founded to house the workers for the distillery, making the two even more intertwined than is often the case. Word began to spread after an actual road was put in during the early 1960s and production expanded. The name of the distillery in Gaelic means “Mouth of the River”. In 2003 the distillery was purchased by Burn Stewart, which is currently folded under Heineken Beverages. The Bunnahabhain Toiteach breaks a little from tradition in being lightly peated, as the distillery is generally more known for making unpeated whisky. Toiteach is pronounced “toch tach” and means “smoky” in Gaelic. It has since been replaced by the Toiteach A Dhà but you can still find the original floating around in stores on occasion.

By Adam | November 30, 2023 | Islay | No Comments |

Springbank is one of the most storied distilleries in Scotland, a land rife with history and legends centered around whisky. The history of scotch in general has seen a number of boom and bust cycles and Springbank is one of the few survivors in Campbeltown of a particularly strong bust cycle of when there were upwards of 30 distilleries in this town of a few thousand on the eastern side of the Kintyre peninsula that faces the Isle of Arran and is only separated from Northern Ireland by a little over ten miles of open water. One of the three current major brands of Springbank is Longrow, named after another lost Campbeltown distillery, and is their peated single malt that is twice distilled. The Longrow Red series is a yearly release bottled at cask strength. No two years are the same, as a different type of red wine cask is used to mature the whisky, whether or not any kind of finish is used. This Longrow Red 15 Year was finished in fresh Pinot Noir casks from New Zealand for four years after 11 years in ex-bourbon barrels.

By Adam | April 20, 2023 | Campbeltown | No Comments |

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