Production at The Speyside Distillery started in 1990. The distillery took its name from the original distillery of the same name, located in Kingussie, which was operational from around 1895 – 1911. The distillery currently uses Concerto barley, sourced from Crisp Malt, Portgordon. Normally unpeated, but peated distillation takes place for a small amount of time each year (December).
The distillery uses a wide range of casks. The majority of these are American ex-bourbon barrels, but they also use casks sourced from Spain, Portugal and France.
The distillery now only produces single malt, and all samples (casks and marriages) are reviewed and approved for bottling by the Management team – Patricia Dillon (MD), John McDonough (CEO) and other team members are involved in the process.
The below notes are taken from my participation in the Speyside Distillery tweet tasting, hosted by The Whisky Wire.
“A very popular multi-vintage bottling from Speyside Distillery. Drawn from different ages of our stocks to give a warm and silky dram with bags of flavour and intensity. A combination of Bourbon and Sherry casks are used to give layers of flavour and richness to this, our biggest selling offering.” – Speyside Distillery
Cask: Bourbon and Sherry Available from the Spey Snug for £65.00
Appearance: Honey gold, tea. Nice and viscous, lots of medium legs
Nose: Sweet shop in a glass, very sugary and confectionery. Strawberry laces sweets, jaffa cakes, pear drops. Marmalade on buttered toast.
Palate: Quite thin and delicate, the ABV is evident. Digestive biscuit wheatiness, milky smooth roast coffee, again a touch drying. There’s a copper tang in there too. There’s some chilli heat developing on the tongue now, nice addition!
Finish: Copper, red apple, icing sugar and a touch of oak.
Overall: I’d love to try a CS version of this as I think it would be more to my taste. That said, the delicate sweet nature of this makes it very friendly and an easy sipper.
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Intro copy from The Whisky Wire/Speyside Distillery
