For my next review on this series dedicated to Independent Bottlers, I am taking a leaf out of my most recent post on IBs cask management. And, specifically, the ability we get, as whisky lovers, to try some of our favourite distilleries’ spirit in as pure a form as we could wish for, outside of sampling the new make off the stills. Having a chance to try a whisky aged “simply” in refill casks, letting the spirit character shine. And this is exactly what I picked for today’s review, a Thompson Bros 2012 Craigellachie.
TL:DR: Creigellachie in its purest form, and it is a banger.
Score: 7.5, Very good stuff, and a bit more
A different look at Craigellachie
Drink whisky for even a short amount of time, and you will end up developing a list of your favourite distilleries. It is likely it will be a list that changes often initially and becomes more stable in time, but be as it may, most of us whisky aficionados end up with such a list. Craigellachie is definitely in mine.
The 13-year-old is one of my favourites, if not my favourite, daily dram. The 17 is a consistently solid whisky, and the 23-year-old, a whisky I managed to try samples of occasionally, is one of those bottles which tempts me to spend more than I am comfortable with for a whisky.
But I have always had one curiosity. All of Craigellachie’s official output uses vatttings of ex-Bourbon and ex-Sherry aged spirit. More towards bourbon in the 1, definitely veering towards Sherry for the 17.
And yet, the spirit always has an underlying tropical character and a touch of funk for me. I was curious to try the spirit with a milder influence, and when this bottle became available (after a quick sample from a friend), I ended up grabbing two. One ended up gifted to a very generous whisky friend, but the other, Thompson Bros Craigellachie 2012, is the whisky I will review today.
Thompson Bros. Craigellachie 2012
Specs
Price paid: €79.15
Bottled date: June 2023
ABV: 50%
Natural colour: Yes
Non-chill filtered: Yes
Casks Used: Refill Barrel
Tasting Notes
Colour: Very pale gold.
Nose: Opens up on a blast of sweet tropical fruit: ripe and baked banana, banana bread, dried pineapple, and honeydew melon. Then there is an almost pastry and creamy component, rich with vanilla. Notes of malt. Some dried citrus, zesty rather than sweet. A little linseed oil funk, and cedar wood. Overall, it is sweet and fruity but with enough contrasting accents to keep it interesting throughout the drinking experience.
Taste & finish: The texture is rich and mouth-coating. The flavours are quite intense. Pineapple and apricot, still a bit of ripe banana, but a lot less than on the nose. A touch of cinnamon and a good sprinkling of dried ginger. A touch of honey, some citrus zest and again that slight lineseed oil note.
The finish is very long, caramelised and dried pineapple, banana chips, ginger, citrus peel and malt. There is a very slight drying sensation, lightly oaky, but free of any bitterness.
Score*: 7.5, Very good stuff, and a bit more
I have yet to be disappointed by a Thompson Bros Bottling, and this review of the Craigellachie 2012 is another confirmation of that. I was looking for a way to try the distillery’s spirit in the most cask-neutral form, and this delivers in spades. All that tropical character I find in the original bottlings is amplified to 11. Banana, melon, pineapple come in wave after wave.
Even better, I love that the funk, which I always find lurking timidly in the background of Craigellachie’s official releases, is much more to the fore here. Not at Campbeltown levels, but it is noticeable and persistent. That might be a negative for some, but it is quite the opposite for me. Well done to the Thompson Bros.
* Scores are based on the scoring scale used by Dramface, slightly modified to allow half-points
Interested in my take on a specific whisky style? Check the full Journey here and jump to the relevant Chapter.
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