On track at Craigellachie

The village of Craigellachie lies at the very heart of Speyside and its whisky-related activities. The settlement’s name is derived from the Gaelic for ‘rocky hill,’ with the outcrop rising to the south of the River Spey, close to its confluence with the Fiddich.

Craigellachie is just over a dozen miles south of Elgin, less than two miles north of Aberlour, and close to the distilling centres of Dufftown and Rothes. It is home to the Speyside Cooperage and the distinctive early 19th century Telford Bridge over the Spey, not to mention the Craigellachie Hotel and The Highlander Inn, with both offering an embarrassment of whisky riches.
The Macallan is close by, on the western side of the Spey, but Craigellachie boast its very own whisky distillery, known to locals as ‘The Craig’. Despite producing a single malt with a much lower profile than its glamorous neighbour, The Craig offers an equally distinctive spirit character.

Like so many of its Speyside neighbours, Craigellachie distillery was founded during the last glorious decade of the 19th century blended whisky boom. Along with the nearby Craigellachie Hotel, which dates from 1893, it was designed by Charles Doig, and was established during 1890/91 under the auspices of the Craigellachie Distillery Co Ltd. This firm numbered Peter Mackie of White Horse blend fame and local laird and distilling entrepreneur Alexander Edward among its investors, who also included a number of wine merchants.

Since the 1860s, Craigellachie had been a major strategic railway hub, where four lines met, linking Speyside with the cities of Perth, Glasgow and Edinburgh, so it was a logical place to site a new distillery.

In 1896 ownership of Craigellachie restructured into the Craigellachie-Glenlivet Distillery Ltd, and in 1916, Mackie & Co (Distillers) Ltd bought the distillery outright for £9,000. Upon the death of Peter Mackie in 1924, Craigellachie became part of White Horse Distillers Ltd. Three years later, White Horse was absorbed into the Distillers Company Ltd (DCL).

Much of Doig’s original distillery was demolished in 1964/65, when the present production buildings were created – with a distinctive DCL ‘house-style’ glass-fronted stillhouse at its heart. The number of stills was doubled to four during the reconstruction programme, and one of the few elements of the old distillery to survive was the distinctive pagoda-headed maltings.

Craigellachie continued supplying malt for blends including White Horse under the DCL regime, but when United Distillers & Vintners was created as the spirits arm of the newly-formed Diageo in 1998, Craigellachie was one of four distilleries sold to John Dewar & Sons’ parent company, Bacardi Limited. The prominent White Horse logo which had adorned the distillery for many years was removed and ‘The Craig’ became associated instead with Dewar’s best-selling White Label and William Lawson blends.

Craigellachie is equipped with a 10-tonnes full lauter mash tun, eight larch washbacks, each with a capacity of 47,000 litres, and two pairs of bulb-shaped stills, with the wash stills being charged with 23,500 litres and the spirit stills with 23,000 litres.

The spirit has a distinctive heavy, meaty character, achieved by short fermentations, the large scale of the stills which allow little reflux, and the presence of worm tubs for condensing purposes. Clear wort and a high spirit run cut add fruity notes into the mix.

At the start of the 1900s, Peter Mackie commissioned Alfred Barnard to write the pamphlet How to Blend Whisky. In it, he wrote of Craigellachie that “The chief characteristic of the Craigellachie brand is the pineapple flavour it develops with age. It matures also very rapidly, eighteen months’ whisky having the appearance of three to four years old. It will be in its prime in about five years”.
Almost a century on, the late Michael Jackson described it as “full-flavoured, malty-fruity, after dinner,” while John Dewar & Sons refers to the house style as “A unique, robust and muscular whisky with a hint of pineapple running through the range.”

Author, diplomat and one-time secret agent Sir Robert Bruce-Lockhart described Peter Mackie (1855-1924) as “One-third genius, one-third megalomaniac and one-third eccentric,” while his contemporaries tended to refer to him as ‘Restless Peter.’

He was born in St Ninians, near Stirling, the son of a farmer and grain merchant, Alexander Mackie, and at the age of 23, he started work for his uncle, James, who headed up Glasgow-based whisky firm James Logan Mackie & Co.

Mackie worked in partnership with John Graham, whose family leased the Islay distillery of Lagavulin, and Peter spent time there learning the practical business of whisky distillation, and Mackie & Co’s White Horse blended Scotch had Lagavulin at its heart.

The name White Horse had been chosen because of the Mackie family’s centuries-long association with the famous White Horse coaching Inn, situated on Edinburgh’s Canongate.

1890 saw the establishment of Mackie & Co (Distillers), with Peter as a partner, and alongside his whisky interests, he developed his very own recipe for flour, named BBM (Brain, Bone and Muscle). This was milled beneath the company’s Glasgow offices and distributed to members of staff, with the aim of keeping workers at Craigellachie distillery and other facilities in the very best of health.