Dalmunach 2016-2021 - 5 Year Old - Duncan Taylor Octave - Single Cask 10825703 - Whisky-Online Exclusive

Dalmunach is a large Speyside distillery constructed by Chivas Brothers (Pernod Ricard) in 2013 on the site of the old Imperial distillery. Dalmunach is equipped with eight large stills, giving it a capacity of around 10 million litres per annum, the vast majority of which goes to Chivas’ blends.  

Distillation at Dalmunach began at the end of 2014, and the first official bottling of Dalmunach single malt whisky was released in 2019, though so far the distillery bottlings have been small batches for sale only at Chivas distilleries. Independent bottlings of Dalmunach are also relatively rare but some Dalmunach casks have been bottled by Duncan Taylor, Dram Mor, Claxton’s and North Star Spirits among others.

Duncan Taylor was founded in 1938, originally as a cask broker. The Glasgow-based company was acquired in the 1960s by the American blender and entrepreneur Abe Rosenberg, who amassed a large stock of maturing casks. Following Rosenberg’s death in 1994 the Duncan Taylor business lay dormant until the early 2000s, when the trustees offered some casks to businessmen Euan Shand and Alan Gordon. 

Shand and Gordon were so impressed with Duncan Taylor’s stock that they bought the company in 2002 and began bottling some of Rosenberg’s best casks. A string of extraordinary bottlings of Longmorn, Macallan, Bowmore and Springbank were released under the now defunct Peerless range and today Duncan Taylor, with Shand in full control since 2006, is established as one of Scotland’s most interesting independent bottlers.