Dailuaine 2007-2018 - 10 Year Old - Creative Whisky Company - Exclusive Malts - Single Cask 1602

Founded in 1852 and expanded to its current six stills as early as 1960, Dailuaine is a large but relatively obscure Speyside distillery, one of many in owner Diageo’s portfolio, which it joined in 1925. Dailuaine bears the proud distinction of being the first distillery in Scotland to have had Charles Cree Doig’s famous pagoda roof on its kilns, although sadly this historic structure was destroyed by fire in 1917.

Dailuaine can make over 5m litres of spirit per annum, but the importance of its whisky to Diageo’s blends means that its official bottling history is rather scanty. Dailuaine 16-year-old Flora & Fauna was introduced in 1991 and was followed by a Rare Malts Edition and a superb Flora & Fauna Cask Strength bottling in 1996-7, before Dailuaine finally got its own Diageo Special Release in 2015. Thankfully, independent Dailuaines first appeared around the end of the 1970s and are now abundant.

The Creative Whisky Company is an independent bottler created by husband and wife team Susan and David Stirk in late 2004. David Stirk had previously worked for both Whisky Magazine and Cadenhead’s and had picked up good contacts in the industry and experience in cask selection and bottling. 

The Creative Whisky Co. company bottled hundreds of malt and grain whiskies from 2005 onwards, the majority of which were single casks bottled at cask strength for the company’s Exclusive Malts series. These whiskies were very fairly priced at the time and remain good value at auction. The Stirks sold the business in 2018 to a private consortium, and no further bottlings have appeared at the time of writing in 2022.