Cragganmore 1993-2019 - 26 Year Old - Duncan Taylor - Octave - Single Cask 4220859

Cragganmore was founded in 1869 by John Smith, and became part-owned by Diageo forerunner DCL in 1927 when the latter bought White Horse Distillers, which had taken a 50% share of Cragganmore in 1923. DCL obtained full control of Cragganmore in 1965, the year after the distillery was expanded to four stills. In 1987 Cragganmore 12-year-old became the Speyside representative of DCL successor United Distillers’ Classic Malts series of single malt whiskies.

Cragganmore’s official bottling history is uneventful. Prior to its elevation to the Classic Malts, a 12-year-old Cragganmore was bottled by DCL subsidiary D&J McCallum Ltd, which held the distillery’s licence; subsequent official bottlings included a superb 17-year-old Manager’s Dram sherry cask released in 1992 and regular outings in Diageo’s Special Releases. Independent Cragganmore is relatively rare, although the SMWS, Duncan Taylor and Gordon & MacPhail have all bottled fine examples from earlier vintages.

Duncan Taylor was founded in 1938, originally as a cask broker. The Glasgow-based company was acquired in the 1960s by the American blender and entrepreneur Abe Rosenberg, who amassed a large stock of maturing casks. Following Rosenberg’s death in 1994 the Duncan Taylor business lay dormant until the early 2000s, when the trustees offered some casks to businessmen Euan Shand and Alan Gordon. 

Shand and Gordon were so impressed with Duncan Taylor’s stock that they bought the company in 2002 and began bottling some of Rosenberg’s best casks. A string of extraordinary bottlings of Longmorn, Macallan, Bowmore and Springbank were released under the now defunct Peerless range and today Duncan Taylor, with Shand in full control since 2006, is established as one of Scotland’s most interesting independent bottlers.