Cragganmore 1989-2011 - Wemyss Malts

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.

William Wemyss founded Wemyss Malts in 2005 after a period working in the wine industry. The company bottles a range of single cask and small batch malt whiskies at 46% or cask strength, and are most famous for their range of blended malts including The Hive, Spice King and Peat Chimney. 

The vast majority of Wemyss products are strongly flavour-themed and, similar to the Scotch Malt Whisky Society, the company’s single cask malts are given playful flavour-based names. Wemyss have bottled some outstanding single cask single malts this century, including remarkable casks from Springbank, Caol Ila, Bowmore and Bunnahabhain. The Wemyss company became distillers in their own right in 2014 when they took over and completed the Kingsbarns distillery project.