Fettercairn 2007-2021 - 14 Year Old - Alistair Walker Infrequent Flyers - Single Cask 1823

The Fettercairn distillery has long been in the shadow of its Whyte & Mackay stablemates Dalmore and Jura, and until very recently received little marketing attention. This situation was not helped by a failed revamp in 2009, when a much-trumpeted launch of 24-year-old, 30-year-old and 40-year-old Fettercairns fell a little flat due to a combination of disappointingly low bottling strengths, poor cask selection on the 30-year-old and some laughably over-ambitious pricing.

Happily for Fettercairn, developments since Whyte & Mackay were purchased by Emperador in 2015 have been encouraging, with a smartly-packaged, well-received new range appearing in 2018. Adventurous whisky fans, though, will find the best value for Fettercairn in cask strength, well-aged independent bottlings from Signatory, Cadenhead’s and Douglas Laing.

Alistair Walker started in the whisky industry straight out of university in the late 1990s when he worked for several years with his father Billy Walker at Burn Stewart. After returning to university for a Masters degree, Walker rejoined the trade in 2004, again working with Billy Walker, who had purchased Benriach distillery in the meantime. 

Walker remained with Benriach Distillery Company until its purchase by Brown Forman in 2016, and founded The Alistair Walker Whisky Company in 2018. The company has since released several dozen single cask malt and grain whiskies under its Infrequent Flyers label, bottled at cask strength without colouring or chill filtration. Walker is an advocate of cask finishing and a significant proportion of the Infrequent Flyers releases have had a secondary maturation.