Kilkerran

Kilkerran Heavily Peated

Glengyle distillery was founded by William Mitchell, one of the co-founders of Springbank, in 1872 and closed in 1925. After many attempts to restart throughout the 20th Century, the distillery finally began production again in 2004 with new stills and other equipment under the same ownership group as Springbank. The distillery sells their offerings under the brand name Kilkerran because the name Glengyle is owned by Loch Lomond and used for their blended malt. The Kilkerran Heavily Peated is a single malt that, as the name implies, is made using heavily peated barley. This is the 8th Edition and was released in May 2023. Though past bottles have listed ppm levels (phenolic parts per million), this edition does not.

By Adam | May 5, 2024 | Campbeltown | No Comments |

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 |