Scotch whisky: Annandale Distillery unveils first 10-year-old malt since reopening
It’s well worth pouring a dram to reflect on the history of this iconic distillery, which is producing award-winning whiskies delighting peat and non-peat lovers alike.
Annandale history
The original Annandale Distillery was set up in 1836 by George Donald, in a reverse of the ‘poacher turned gamekeeper’ George was an excise man from Banff in Aberdeenshire who crossed the floor to become a whisky producer along with a consortium of business partners.
The carefully chosen site in a clearing in the woods in Dumfriesshire provided a plentiful water source – essential for both the whisky production process and generating power for the grain mill.
There was no shortage of peat either to fuel the kiln for the malted barley as George owned some peat bogs, which gave this lowland distillery the unusual option to produce peated whiskies as well as unpeated ones. The damp, mild climate made it perfect for on-site maturation – a tradition that continues today.
Like many other independent producers in Scotland it was eventually bought out by a larger company, in this case Johnnie Walker, which took over in 1893, only to have to mothball it after the First World War in 1918.
It was sold to a farming family, who stored oats in the stillhouse and bedded cattle down in the warehouses.
Thankfully the pink sandstone building just about survived. And so it was when Professor David Thomson and his wife and business partner Teresa Church came to look at the buildings in 2007 – inspired by a book of lost distilleries called Scotch Mist – they found themselves standing in a field contemplating bringing the distillery back to life.
A £12.5million investment was needed to get Annandale back to production, and it took seven years, but in 2014 – a hundred years after the last cask of the original distillery left the warehouse - the first spirit dripped out of the stills and was put into casks.
And it is that spirit which this year was lovingly bottled – the first 10-year-old to come out of this newly-revived distillery.
Inspired by the greats
The two main expressions from Annandale are both named after iconic Scottish men – Man O Words is an unpeated single malt inspired by Scotland’s best-loved poet Robert Burns, who was also a former excise man in Annan.
Man O Sword meanwhile, inspired by Robert the Bruce, King of Scotland and the Seventh Earl of Annandale, embraces those peaty phenols to deliver a deliciously smoky dram.
An association with Scottish actor and legend James Cosmo – Braveheart, Highlander, Game of Thrones - led to the distillery’s award-winning premioum blended whisky Storyman a high-malt mix of malt and grain whiskies bottled at a modest 46%.
Singling out the casks
James Rogerson, Annandale’s spirit and tasting expert, is best place to tell us more about the spirit itself. He has the unenviable task of taste-testing the casks in the warehouse as they mature and buying in the wood to develop the flavour profiles for the future – Bourbon casks from the US, Sherry casks from Spain, Wine barrels from France and Mizunara casks from Japan. Each wood, style of grain, porousness and what it has held before will influence the flavour of the neat spirit to come off the stills. But that’s not to say Annandale does not have a signature flavour profile, with orchard fruits at the fore, and hints of tropical fruits overlaid with grassy notes and, of course, the smoky afterglow of the peated whiskies.
Unusually in the whisky industry Annandale bottles single casks, which means you can buy a core expression this year and find it has a slightly different flavour profile from one bottled last year, from a different cask.
James explains: “Most distilleries will look for something that is as consistent as possible.” This usually means mixing spirit from different casks in the same ‘recipe’ to create a particular flavour profile.
“But we like to celebrate the fact that each individual cask has a unique character to it. The fact you can get two casks filled within a minute of each other, sitting in the same warehouse but they can have such flavour profile differences is quite spectacular.”
Annandale sells single casks to clients, but even with the Man O Words and Man O Sword it bottles single casks rather than vatting them together. “We like to exploit that uniqueness.” James told The Scotsman’s Rosalind Erskine, when she visited the distillery just before the 10-year-old release.
And what of the new 10-year-old? Well, it will retain the signature characteristic of Annandale whisky.
“The character will come through,” says James. “That orchard fruit characteristic. We don’t want it to be over-mature, too woody, we want that character to shine through.”
The 10-year-old is available both online and at the Annandale distillery itself.
You can hear more about her visit and the distillery by listening to the podcast here
Visit Annandale
More than 50,000 people visit the distillery at Northfield, Annan, every year and you could join them for a tour and a tasting. Find out more on the website here.