Craigellachie 1978 - 16 Year Old - First Cask - Single Cask 7703

Craigellachie distillery was founded in 1890 by Sandy Brown and Peter Mackie and was absorbed into Diageo forerunner DCL in 1927. Craigellachie was expanded to four stills in 1964 but still uses worm tubs to condense its spirit. In 1998 Craigellachie was one of five distilleries sold to Bacardi along with the Dewar’s blend in order to gain the Monopolies & Mergers Commission’s blessing for the merger that created Diageo.

Craigellachie’s whisky was so important for the White Horse & Old Smuggler blends that DCL never bottled it as a single malt. DCL successors United Distillers released a 14-year-old Flora & Fauna bottling and a Rare Malts Edition in the 1990s shortly before the distillery was sold. After bottling a rather lacklustre 14-year-old around the turn of the millennium, Bacardi/Dewar’s relaunched Craigellachie properly in 2014 to great acclaim. Independent Craigellachie used to be rather rare but is now abundant and generally excellent quality.

The First Cask range was a prolific series of single malt whisky bottlings by the UK’s largest mail order wine company Direct Wines Ltd, owner of Laithwaite’s and The Sunday Times Wine Club. From the early 1990s until the mid-Noughties Direct Wines released dozens of outstanding single cask whiskies annually under the First Cask label, almost all of which were bottled at 46%.

These whiskies were not particularly highly sought-after on release, probably because they were only sold online through a wine club.  Back then, of course, it was not widely known that the casks had been sourced from Signatory Vintage, which would certainly have raised their profile among whisky fans. Nowadays, although still frequently excellent value at auction, the First Cask collection - which includes hundreds of long-aged whiskies from distilleries including Brora, Port Ellen, Ardbeg and Macallan - is finally getting the recognition it deserves.