Craigellachie Distillery, Speyside: The Old-Style Workhorse

Overview

Craigellachie stands above the famous Telford bridge at the meeting of the Fiddich and the Spey, but unlike its neighbours it is a working production distillery with no visitor centre — you can’t tour it. Its whisky is deliberately old-fashioned: muscular, meaty and faintly sulphury, a robust, heavily-textured malt made the way Speyside whisky often tasted a century ago.

The history

Craigellachie was built in 1890–91 by a company led by Alexander Edward and Sir Peter Mackie — the driving force behind the White Horse blend — to supply malt for blending, which is what it did for well over a century. It is now owned by Bacardi’s John Dewar & Sons, who bottle it as a single malt with a proud emphasis on its old-school production: it still uses worm-tub condensers, an old technique that helps give the whisky its heavy, sulphury character.

The water & the land

Craigellachie’s water comes from the Blue Hill spring (also called the Alt-a-choil burn) in the Little Conval Hills, collected behind a dam known as the “Blue Hill”. Worm tubs and that water combine to make its notably heavy, oily spirit.

The distillery has no clan founding — it was a hard commercial venture by blenders. It sits, though, at the very centre of historic Grant Speyside, by the village of Craigellachie whose great iron bridge (built by Thomas Telford, 1814) is one of the landmarks of the region.

Visiting

Craigellachie is not open to visitors — there is no tour or visitor centre, and it is a live production site. The village of Craigellachie, however, is a fine base for touring Speyside, with Telford’s bridge, the Speyside Cooperage nearby and a famous whisky hotel bar; the brand website covers the whisky itself.

Nearby & more whisky

• Its near neighbour: The Macallan
• A short way up the Spey: Aberlour
• The whole picture: Scotch whisky — regions, distilleries & the oldest of all

Sources

• Craigellachie distillery — Wikipedia.
• Craigellachie / John Dewar & Sons; Difford’s Guide.