Dufftown 2007-2020 - 12 Year Old - Cadenheads - Single Cask

Dufftown is one of the lesser-known Speysiders, despite being one of the larger distilleries in Diageo’s portfolio. Dufftown was for many years part of the Bell’s whisky company, which also owned the Blair Athol, Inchgower, Pittyvaich and Bladnoch distilleries when it was acquired by Guinness in 1985. This hostile takeover brought all of those distilleries into the United Distillers fold and later into Diageo. 

Dufftown’s malt was bottled officially at least as early as the 1950s and an official 40-year-old appeared in the 1970s. A 15-year-old Flora & Fauna bottling appeared in 1988, followed by a Rare Malts Edition and an underrated sherried Centenary Bottling in the 1990s. Dufftown became the European face of The Singleton whisky range in 2007, and Singleton of Dufftown featured in Diageo’s Special Releases in 2013 and 2020. Independent bottlings of Dufftown whisky are easy to find.

In 1842 George Duncan established a wine merchant and distillery agency business in Aberdeen. Duncan was joined in the early 1850s by his brother-in-law William Cadenhead, who took over the business after Duncan’s death in 1858, changing the company’s name to Wm. Cadenhead. When Cadenhead died in 1904 the company passed to his nephew Robert Duthie, who developed the spirits side of the business.

Duthie died suddenly in 1931, and employee Ann Oliver was put in charge of Cadenhead’s. Sadly, Oliver’s tenure ended in financial difficulty and on her retirement in 1972 the business was forced to sell its entire inventory. Cadenhead’s was acquired soon afterwards by J & A Mitchell, proprietors of Springbank distillery, who relocated the business to Campbeltown. Cadenhead’s has flourished under Mitchell’s stewardship, releasing many legendary single malt bottlings in the 1980s and 1990s and now has outlets in Edinburgh and London as well as Campbeltown.