Ballindalloch
Ballindalloch – Austria exclusive
2016
Region
Speyside
Style
Single Malt Scotch Whisky
Distillery
Ballindalloch
Bottler
Ballindalloch Distillery LLP, Lagmore, AB37 9AX Ballindalloch, UK
Price
€ 138. -
Price per bottle (70cl)
Cask number
Bourbon Barrell # 233
Ballindalloch – Austria exclusive is also available in our store
Single Cask / Cask Strength
Non chill filtered
No added colour
BALLINDALLOCH HISTORY
While Ballindalloch is one of Scotland’s newest whisky distilleries, and perhaps one of the prettiest, its story runs as far back as the 16th century. Built within the grounds of Ballindalloch Castle on the banks of the River Avon, the distillery marks the return of the Macpherson-Grant family to the distilling industry.
The castle itself was built in 1546 and has been home to the Macpherson-Grants ever since, but it was just up the road at Cragganmore that the family first invested in Scotch. Sir George Macpherson-Grant leased part of the Ballindalloch estate to distiller John Smith to build Cragganmore Distillery in 1869. After Smith died in 1923 the family became joint owners of the distillery with White Horse Distillers.
The Macpherson-Grants remained involved with Cragganmore for the best part of the 20th century, eventually selling their stake in the distillery to DCL in 1965. It took the family almost 50 years to return to whisky once more.
Come 2011, Guy Macpherson-Grant, 23rd generation of his family and current occupier of Ballindalloch Castle, began construction of a malt whisky distillery in a 19th century farm steading, making it Scotland’s only whisky distillery to operate within a castle’s grounds.
Hailing itself as 'Scotland’s first single estate distillery', Ballindalloch uses barley harvested from its own fields and feeds its award-winning Aberdeen Angus cattle – the world’s oldest Angus herd – on the draff. Production officially began in late 2014, although the distillery was officially opened by a visit from the Duke and Duchess of Rothesay (now: King Charles III and Queen Camilla) in 2015.
The Macpherson-Grants have committed to waiting at least eight years before bottling any of Ballindalloch’ s whisky, although visitors to the site will be able to sample some of the family’s private casks from Cragganmore.
BALLINDALLOCH DISTILLERY - AN INTRIGUING TECHNICAL INSIGHT
Firstly, Ballindalloch was designed and built specifically to bring the ancient art of whisky making back to life by utilising the centuries old methods and techniques, used by our forebears.
The distillery is housed in and old farm steading dating back to the mid 1800’s. Due to building restrictions the distillery had to be designed to fit into the existing building with the absolute minimum of alterations to the original framework. This means that not only is the distilling process fully manual (itself a rarity these days), but it is extremely compact, meaning the whole process from milling to distillation can be viewed in sequence in one building.
Starting production in late 2014, we carry out a single one tonne mash and distillation run each weekday Monday to Friday. This of course means long fermentations over the weekend. With some of the longest fermentation times in Speyside of 140 hours, our wash has time to benefit from the fruity esters produced from the dead yeast at the bottom of the wash-backs. This gives our fermented wash not the usual flavour of a beer, but more of a cider or perry with apple and pear flavours to the fore.
As with everything else at Ballindalloch, there is no pressure to distill as quickly as possible in order to increase production. Spirit quality is our main aim and takes precedence over volume. Our distillation times reflect this with our wash still taking a minimum of 6 hours to distill a volume of 5,000 litres. Our foreshots in the spirit still are run for a minimum of 30 minutes, and only when the still man is happy that the spirit is ready does he start to collect it for filling to cask. The spirit doesn’t so much flow into the spirit safe, but trickles. Thus allowing the copper from the stills and worm tub condensers to work their magic. Around 600 bulk litres of spirit is collected over a 3 hour spirit run.
Traditional worm tub condensers are utilised at Ballindalloch, which often surprises many of our guests.
With Worm tubs traditionally associated with the creation of a heavy spirit character, it is a question that is often asked as to why we can create such a smooth, complex and light spirit from them.
The answer is simple, in that we at Ballindalloch run our worm tubs in a rather unique way.
Traditional worm tubs are run on what we call a ’single pass’ method, whereby cold water is pumped from a river or stream to rapidly cool and condense the spirit vapours. In return, the warm water created during this process is returned to the river.
We at Ballindalloch recognised this as not being exactly environmentally friendly and so came up with a more sustainable method of running the worm tubs.
Fresh cold water is drawn from our series of 7 springs to initially fill our tubs. As the water in the tubs begins to warm, it is pumped under our access road to a nearby cooling tower, where a fan draws cool air over the falling water, thus bringing down the temperature of the water before it is pumped back to the worm tub. This also means we are in effect saving water by recycling it.
Because the temperature of our cooling water is never quite as cold as that of a traditionally run worm tub, it means that the spirit vapours are not condensed until they have travelled further along our 70m long copper worms, thus getting more or that magical, sulphur reducing copper contact which makes for a lighter, more complex spirit.
The decision not to release our whisky until it was ready was a bold one…but one which has paid off, with our first hand filled and labelled bottles being sold from the distillery last year. This year has already seen the successful launch of our first bottles to be released to the general retail market, and our first orders to overseas destinations leaving the distillery having been mashed, fermented, distilled, matured and bottled on-site by our small team of multi-skilled operators.
COLIN POPPY
Distillery Manager
March 2024
The region Speyside
Speyside, a part of the Highlands, enjoys a special status in the whisky world.
The river Spey provided the name. Speyside is neither a geographical nor a specific administrative term but with more than 50 operating malt whisky distilleries it is deemed to be the cradle of the single malt whisky. Situated East of Inverness, South of the Firth of Moray and North of the Grampian Mountains it is home to the most famous of Scottish distilleries. The Speyside whisky’s expression is dominated by fruity notes and is known for its complexity and elegance.
