Campbeltown

Kilkerran 12 Year

The Glengyle distillery is a story of what can happen to a name in the topsy-turvy history of scotch. The storied Springbank distillery of Campbeltown was founded by Archibald Mitchell, and his two sons took it on after him. The brothers had a falling out eventually. Brother John kept Springbank and William founded Glengyle distillery right down the road in 1872. Like many distilleries in Scotland and Campbeltown, it closed in the 1920s before being reopened after several attempts in 2000 by the great-great nephew of William Mitchell, Hedley Wright, operating under J&A Mitchell and Co, the current owner of Springbank, along with Scotland’s oldest independent bottler, William Cadenhead. The choice of the name Kilkerran comes from the Gaelic Ceann Loch Cille Chiarain, the name of an older settlement on which Campbeltown now stands. It is not called Glengyle, because that name is already in use by a brand of blended Highland scotches and the distillery wanted to avoid confusion. The distillery has released several “works in progress” offerings and only recently has introduced core aged statements, this Kilkerran 12 year and Kilerran 8 year.

By Adam | January 20, 2020 | Campbeltown | No Comments |

This series of SnapShot posts derives from whisky exchanges people known as the Whiskyfabric, a term created by Canadian whisky writer Johanne McInnis, otherwise known as the Whisky Lassie, to encompass the online community of whisky writers, creators, reviewers and enthusiasts that exist on social media. And sometimes the connections made online can spill offline. Over the past couple of years, we here at Scotchology have exchanged whiskies via mail with a number of folks across the United States and Canada, and finally decided to sit down to taste the bounty in one fell swoop. Or several swoops, because there was really a lot of whisky! We’ve done a rough grouping and this post contains various non-Islay scotches: Speyside, Highland, Lowland and Campbeltown malts. Islay scotches and other world whiskies get their own posts.

By Adam | February 20, 2019 | Musings | No Comments |

Campbeltown is in some ways a whisky ghost town, once home to over 30 distilleries yet now only three remain, like gunslingers in an old Western. Looked at another way, however, and whisky in Campbeltown is resurgent. The three distilleries remaining are successful and robust, with Springbank leading the pack as one of the most well-regarded in Scotland. Still the only distillery to house the entire process on site, from malting to bottling, they have the capacity and foresight to experiment on the side while still supporting their core range (including the Hazelburn and Longrow lines). This Springbank 12 Year Burgundy has the spirit aged in first fill Burgundy barrels, which means the wine’s influence is stronger. The Longrow Red series typically experiments with wine finishes, so seeing the Springbank spirit treated thus is a welcome treat.

By Adam | February 28, 2018 | Campbeltown | No Comments |