Scotland may be home to over a hundred distilleries yet few hold as much historical significance as Edradour, often known as Scotland's original farm distillery. The small and traditional distillery is one of the last remaining of its era to still be in operation, calling back to the days when Scottish distilling was illegal. It was thus here in Pitlochry, Perthshire, where this quaint little distillery had for so long produced its handmade Highland single malt whisky, not all that far from Lindores Abbey, where the friars had made the first drops of what was then known as aqua vitae for the then King James IV.

The history of Edradour is also very much intertwined with the long and illustrious history of Scottish whisky. Whilst the earliest official history of Edradour stretches back to 1825, we know for a fact that what would become Edradour was simply illicit distilling from people in the area.

While 130 illicit still sites have been discovered, archaeologists say there might be thousands more in the Highlands of Scotland that remain undiscovered. 

This was due to the 1781 Act in Scotland, which essentially made all private, unlicensed whisky distillation illegal. This was because so many people were doing it for their own consumption and even for sale, which led to the English government missing out on a great deal of valuable excise duties. 

Not to lose out on this potential tax, they had the (at the time) ingenious idea of banning the widespread practice and making permits expensive, but this only succeeded in driving production underground, and admittedly with even more fervour.

With more illicit distilling, smuggling and overall lack of order, the government soon realised why their act might not have been such a great idea. This brings us to the landmark 1823 Excise Act.

Seeing a need for oversight and quality control, the Act would now make legal distilling affordable and achievable for more producers with lower license fees and duties. Soon, it was more expensive to pay fines for illegal distilling than simply registering your activities and continuing as a business.

And so this is where the story of Edradour properly begins. The distillery was initially named Glenforres in 1825 by an informal consortium of local farmers who applied for the license. From what records remain, we know that one Alexander Forbes was the official license holder, a man who other sources also identify as Duncan Forbes.

There's some years that are lost to history here, but the next big thing that happens for Edradour comes in 1834. As the distilling had been happening in a rather makeshift way, the group of farmers, led by one Mungo Stewart, decided that it was time to have proper buildings and a better location, and proceeded to write to the Duke of Atholl to request for said buildings to be built for a "proper" distillery ground.

The new grounds that was chosen were situated in a small valley near Pitlochry, in a position naturally bordered by water — specifically, the Edradour Burn (stream) and the nearby River Tummel and River Ta. This new distillery would be renamed Edradour, drawing its name from the Gaelic Eadar Dhà Dhobhar, which aptly meant ‘between two rivers’(The Edradour Burn and Either the Tummel or Ta).

The Edradour Burn, which runs past the Edradour distillery.

In 1837, two representatives, James Scott and Duncan Stewart, formally took over as the distillery's official tenants along with Alexander Forbes. Sources say that a few years later in 1841, a formal cooperative was formed under the name of John McGlashan and Co. with eight members, including Alexander Forbes, Duncan Stewart, James Scott, James Robertson, Alexander Stewart, and William McIntosh.

While the years of 1884 to 1846 were great for the up and coming distillery, it started running into some undefined troubles, and by 1853, local farmer James Reid took control, forming James Reid and Company. Some sources say that John McGlashan continued to manage the distillery up until 1977.

However, Edradour's struggles did not cease under Reid's leadership, leading to another transfer of ownership. In 1884, William McIntosh's son John took over the company, beginning the McIntosh era of Edradour.

We say "era", because the distillery changes hands a few more times after that (but let's not get carried away). Under John's leadership, the distillery saw quite some success, thanks in no small part to John's leadership, rebuilding of some areas of the distillery and overall rebranding. However, this good fortune was not to last, John McIntosh passed away soon after in 1907, handing the reins over to his nephew, Peter McIntosh. His first few years were uneventful, but in 1911, Edradour began seeking partners in order to expand further. A wine and spirit merchant by the name of John Stewart joined the distillery in order to increase its scope and distribution. Fortunately, the distillery managed to weather through WWI without much damage to its procedures.

However, almost two decades after WWI, Peter began experiencing a prolonged spate of bad health that showed no signs of recovery. On top of a recession occurring in the whisky industry at the time, he made the move to sell the distillery. Whisky blender William Whiteley would answer this call, and in 1933, Edradour's ownership left the hands of the Scottish for the first time in its history.

Whiteley was no stranger to Edradour, however. He had previously bought Edradour stock for his own blended expressions “King’s Ransom” and “House of Lords”, the latter of which is still produced today.

Now, here's where things take a wild turn! As it turns out, Whiteley made his money during the heyday of Prohibition, and had none other than the infamous Frank Costello as his sales consultant, with the American side of his business communicated through Costello’s right-hand man, Irving Haim.

Now, if Costello might sound familiar, it's because he is widely known as being one of the founding members of the Mafia in America, being an Italian-American crime boss of the Luciano crime family and also being highly active during Prohibition as a bootlegger. As the story goes, Costello was fairly distanced from the business, but the image of a distillery with Mafia connections seemed to enhance its appeal, increasing its popularity.

Whiteley retired in 1938, and Haim fully acquired ownership of the distillery. It grew and maintained popularity up to after WWII, during which time Edradour successfully continued to produce its flagship blends. It remained in his custody until his passing in 1976. 

This is when Edradour proceeds into the modern age, changing hands yet once more. This time, the distillery was briefly owned by an American-Australian business consortium for six years before being acquired by Pernod Ricard in 1982. The name of the consortium, unfortunately, seems to have been lost to time.

The official launch of Edradour's very own single malt expression soon followed in 1984, shortly after the distillery's visitor center was built a year prior.

The new single malt did very well, too, helping the distillery obtain the Queen’s Award in 1980. While the way was paved for Edradour's single malts, Pernod did also use the bulk of the spirit for their "Clan Campbell" house blend and the "House of Lords" brand, while the "King’s Ransom" blend was discontinued.

For the next few decades, time passed rather uneventfully for the distillery. It wasn't until 2002, where the next big thing happened: After 26 years of foreign ownership, the distillery was brought back into the fold of locally-owned distilleries in Scotland.

None other than famed independent bottler Signatory Vintage would buy over ownership of Edradour! The founder of Signatory Vintage Ltd is one Andrew Symington, a native Scot and also a Keeper of the Quaich (a member of an exclusive international society honoring those with outstanding contributions to the Scotch Whisky industry).

Under Symington's stewardship, Edradour's whisky offerings and name grew substantially. This included starting the distillation of a peated version of Edradour's classic whisky in 2003 - the Ballechin - and the undertaking of major refurbishments of historic buildings on the distillery's grounds, as well as moving the operations of Signatory Vintage to Edradour.

Today, the distillery remains on the same farmhouse grounds it first relocated to all those years ago. The distillery continues to use a small, 110-year-old cast iron open mash tun to mix the malted barley and spring water almost daily. In a continuation of local tradition, the spent barley grains - known as draff - are shoveled from the mash tun into an open cart outside the still house. This nutrient-rich byproduct is collected daily by a local farmer to be used as feed for his cattle.

Edradour's Morton Refrigerator.

The resulting wort is cooled using only cold water in the Morton Refrigerator - the last working apparatus of its kind in the entire global whisky industry.

Largely abandoned in favour of more modern heat exchangers, the Morton Refrigerator contains a series of metal fins that hold cold water. As the wort flows in with the help of gravity across the cold metal surfaces, heat is quickly transferred, cooling the liquid down to the precise temperature required for yeast pitching. Most notably, this process is open to the air, which can cause slight oxidation that has been said to contribute a subtle difference to the final spirit character compared to modern, closed-system plate heat exchangers.

Uniquely Edradour has utilized a Morton Refrigerator to cool its wort since the early 20th century. Although the original unit finally deteriorated beyond repair, the distillery actually went through the incredible effort of commissioning an exact replica crafted from stainless steel!

The cooled wort is then transferred into two Oregon Pine washbacks, both of which have been in service for over 50 years. From there, the liquid moves to the stillhouse, where Edradour utilises two copper stills for distillation. While the copper stills are regular pot stills, the second distillation's still is notably the smallest traditional still currently operating in Scotland.

The spirit is then moved to traditional worm tubs for condensation. The tubs use coiled copper pipes which have water cooled from the Edradour Burn run through them, and are amongst the last handful of those remaining in Scotland.

After the finishing touches of being barreled, aged and bottled, the whisky is then available for consumption. The bottling of the whisky originally took place outside the distillery grounds, but Symington did not want to continue the offsite practice, leading him to build a new bottling facility at the distillery in 2007.

While relatively unchanged, the buildings on the distillery grounds have seen some changes and improvements throughout the years. In more recent times, Pernod Ricard began expansion of the distillery by adding a new visitor centre in 1983. In 2006, Symington opened a new Tasting Bar at the distillery, and continued the expansion in 2010 with the opening of the events space Caledonia Hall, alongside a new dunnage warehouse designed to mature both Edradour and Ballechin whiskies on-site.

Dornoch distillery is widely considered the smallest distillery in Scotland spatially, localised entirely within an ex fireman's shed and having only 47 square meters of floor space.

Now, there's that matter of Edradour's label as Scotland's smallest distillery, which you might hear when the distillery is brought up in conversation. While true for several years, that is in fact technically incorrect now. As expansion and popularity forced Edradour to increase production capacity to 400,000 litres annually by 2018, distilleries like Daftmill (20,000 litres) and Strathearn (30,000 litres) soon dethroned Edradour. This of course, is not to mention the several other micro distilleries that continue to pop up across Scotland. 

Well then, how does Edradour (the unpeated whiskies of the distillery) and its peated sibling Ballechin taste? It's worth noting that the distillery's preference is for Edradour to be aged in Sherry and Wine casks, whilst Ballechin is more typically aged in ex-Bourbon.

Let's get into it!

Whisky Review: Edradour Highland Single Malt Whisky 10 Years Old, 40% ABV

Tasting Notes

Aroma: Quite a spread of flavors here. Initially it approaches as quite sherried, with that familiar dried red fruit note of raisins, currants and some plums that's underlined by faint orange citrus. There's a fair bit of baking spice (pepper, cloves, cinnamon) and accompanying heat, too. The mid-nose reveals vanilla, mild custard, and layers of cereal and baked brioche. There's also dried straw, fresh oak, and cocoa, with some faint mint on the back end, along with just a bit of leather and rancio. 

Taste: Much sweeter than expected, with a more upfront, albeit jammier presence of fruit. It's much darker like stewed red fruit, invoking mulled wine, plums, raisins, and cherries. That earlier baking spice note comes on strong, accompanied by an equal amount of heat. More on cinnamon, black pepper, cardamom and cloves, which segues into a milk chocolate note and some slightly caramelized toffee. 

There's certainly a stronger oak presence on the palate, too, with more vanilla coming in on the back end, interspaced by brown sugar. There's a faint woody nuttiness like that of crushed walnuts or pecans, with a licorice green-ness that comes in later. It becomes tannic toward the end, with dark chocolate and syrupy red fruit once more. Some treacle, espresso and just a hint of saline that rounds it out. The mouthfeel is reminiscent of melted butter is a rather pleasant manner.

Finish: Medium in length, it's starting to bring out chocolates with the liquid core full of rich red fruit flavors. A gentle ebb across the board, there's equal parts dry oak, nutty bitterness, licorice, honey, vanilla and spices. There is a slight hint of earthiness calling back to its aromas, again reminiscent of cocoa, or perhaps some damp earth with faint salt.

My Thoughts

A flavorful and expressive dram! Sherried in a way that still leaves plenty of space for all the other flavors, it's really rather fantastic. Everything also comes together in a way that let's every element shine, without overstaying its welcome. For those that adore sherried whiskies, this expression really is right on the money. It's also nuanced so much as to be particularly stimulating to those that might be more impartial to Sherry flavours, as there's really a lot to pick out as the dram goes on. It actually reminds me a bit of a Christmas fruit cake, with an equal amount of ingredients. Perhaps the only aspect that I'd like to see more of, is a greater thickness of the mouthfeel, where here it's just a little thinner than I'd prefer. If it were oilier it'd complement the flavors well! Nonetheless, super interesting and flavorful!

Whisky Review: Ballechin Heavily Peated Highland Single Malt Whisky 10 Years Old, 46% ABV

The peated version of Edradour's signature offering. Produced using barley peated to at least 50ppm, this spirit undergoes maturation in both bourbon and sherry casks. It is bottled at 46% ABV and remains un-chill filtered. The peat source has yet to be revealed by the distillery.

Ballechin although today folded within Edradour, was in fact once a distillery itself, having operated between 1810 and 1927, and was in fact one of but seven original farm distilleries in Perthshire - of these original seven, only Edradour remained, with Ballechin lost to time. Nevertheless, during the time of its operations, it had done fairly well for itself, having supplied customers both locally, and as far as wine merchants in Edinburgh and Glasgow, having been operated by the Robertson family. A diversion in its water source would ultimately prove to be its demise, with the remaining stock of whiskies allowed to be moved over within a grace period of 3 years. In 2002, Edradour would revive the Ballechin name as its peated whisky.

 

The Ballechin House, pre 1964.

 

As an interesting side note, the Ballechin name is in fact tied to a Ballechin House that had once been on the estate of the former distillery - it had in fact held the reputation of being the most haunted house in Scotland. Without getting into too much of the details, the house had once been the home of a Robert Stuart, who had served in the East India Company, returning home with a deep belief in mysticism that he had picked up in India. As such, Stuart had often claimed that upon his death, he would reincarnate as one of his beloved Spanial dogs, a claim that would deeply spook his nephew, who would eventually take over the house. Stuart's eventual passing would set off a series of claims of unexplained paranormal activities, which gave the house its reputation.

By 1932, the house was abandoned and uninhabitable. It was finally demolished in 1963 following a fire which left only the servants' quarters behind. 

The whisky that would come to bear its name today, thankfully, is not haunted.

 

Tasting Notes

Aroma:  Off the bat, there's a strong presence of peat and accompanying smoke, as well as campfire ashes. The peat and smoke come together to provide a meatiness and earthiness that resembles sweet barbeque sauce, too. There's just a sprinkle of what seems to be petrol on the edge, with some minty qualities. This segues into a good amount of red fruit presence. On top of a rather obvious sherry influence, there's also a good amount of dried red fruit like raisins, sultanas, figs and even cranberries. Next comes wet straw, vanilla and a fair bit of baking spice (mainly cinnamon, allspice, cloves). Some sweetness like that of tinned fruit syrup on the back end, with vanilla, dry oak, cocoa and light espresso. There's a rancio all the way at the end that is reminiscent of dried anchovies, with the smoke note becoming more saline.

Taste: A sweet dram! Red fruit pounces forth with a later addition of caramelised barbeque sauce. A nut bitterness follows, much like toasted hazelnuts or walnuts. Just before the mid-palate, there's a hint of fresh green-nessess like wet grass or orchard fruit skins. The dried red fruit comes out again, with raisins, sultanas, and cranberries making a comeback with sherry. In the background, also remains hay, oak, orange peels, vanilla and some dark chocolate. There's some maltiness in there too. Everything put together is deeply evocative of a Christmas fruit cake, which holds much resemblance to Edradour. Baking spices provide a spiciness that gives way to an incense smokiness with campfire ash and wet musty peat. Some musty wood with leather, which quickly tapers off into a mild medicinal salinity. The peat and spice seem to ramp up toward the finish, as opposed to fading out. The mouthfeel is oily, with an almost honeyed presence.

Finish: A tongue coating, medium sweetness. More sweetness and smoke come out stronger toward the end and really goes on until it's over. Splashes of fruit linger on the edges, along with dry oak and some charcoal bitterness in equal parts too. Some vanilla, campfire ash, and peat, too. A faint green presence seems to show with subsequent sips, with some coriander, menthol and wet soil. 

  

My Thoughts

As a lover of peated whiskies that's also partial to sherried expressions, this particular dram was quite the interesting one. A "best of both worlds" kind of situation, I must say the distillery has pulled this off quite well. It's nuanced without being overwhelming, while the flavors present remain familiar and highly approachable.

I also quite adore the mouthfeel on this. Much oiler and mouth coating than your standard Edradour, it really makes the whole dram excitingly chewy and even more delicious. The interplay of contrasting flavors like smoke and sweet, heavy and light also make it layered in all the best ways.

An added benefit is also that it can be a great introductory dram for those not yet appreciative of peat, those not yet appreciative of sherry influences in their whisky, or someone who hasn't tried both!

Final Thoughts

Both expressions are really quite lovely, although ultimately the Ballechin with its peat is admittedly in another camp of its own and can't really be compared directly with the original Edradour. However, I do appreciate that the Edradour base can still be tasted, and familiar notes forming the backbone of the latter do not vary too much, so that the peat influences act as an upgrade as opposed to taking over what Edradour's whisky is known for.

That aside, the distillery has excelled in the way it has allowed the sherry influence to seep into its whisky while giving way to the other nuances. It's somehow a sherry bomb, without being too much of a sherry bomb. The fruit notes interact and uplift nearly everything else that's present in the whisky, and I quite appreciate also the Christmas fruit cake vibes that this distillery has managed to imbue in its expressions. 

Both expressions are cosy, tasty, thoroughly enjoyable and I daresay punched way above my first expectations. A solid showing for Scotland's smallest distillery!

  

Lok Bing Hong A budding journalist that loves experiencing new things and telling people's stories. I have 30 seconds of irresponsibly sanctimonious brilliance a day. I do not decide when they come. They are not consecutive.