Richard Campbell (133:20)
Yeah, that kind of thing. And the trick here is get the price down. You're used to drinking JMB Rare or Bells or Famous Grouse and so forth at $20 a bottle and suddenly I'm throwing a hundred dollars a bottle at you. You're like, you're not going to do it. So how do I get the price down? And they found a way. And the way was to use a single, branding the singleton across three different distilleries, which kind of undermines the whole idea of a single Malta. But they're not blending them. What they're actually doing is Diageo owns these three distilleries. The Dufftown Distillery, the Glendoola Distillery and Glen Ord. They also own Orrisk, but they're not using that for the Singleton anymore. It's still going to J and B Rare. It's not part of the Singleton plant, but they're using the overproduction from the distillery. So when they have excess barrels that they joke aren't going into blends, then they make Singleton and that way they get it down to $45 a bottle. So it's a weird whiskey in the sense of it depends on where it's coming from. So I got to kind of talk about the three distilleries because they're not the same, but. And we'll start with Dufftown because a, it's the one I've got. And also it's a town, right? Like it's the whiskey town. And I, every time I'm in Scotland, I spend a little time in Duffon. It's been a town for 1500 years. You know, there's evidence of the Picts there in the 500s. It is literally on the River Fiddick. So where the term Glenfiddich comes from. And that's the largest distillery in Duffton. Glenfiddick Balvenies, on the same grounds as Glenfiddick Mortlock, which we've talked about. Kinnivy, which is owned by the Glenfiddick folk. And then these other two distilleries, the Dufftown Distillery and the Glendulin Distillery. There are three other distilleries that are in Deftown that are now closed. There's Conville Moor, which was open from 1894 to 1985. And now its land is used by Glenfiddich for barrel storage. Parkmoor, 1894-1988, now owned by Edrington, that's Famous Grouse and the Macallan. They also whiskey storage. And Pittivike, which was a modern distillery built in 1974, shut down in 1993, torn down 2002. So the Dufftown distiller again, 1895, one of the old distilleries, originally operated by the McKenzie Company until 1933. Then it was taken over by Arthur Bells and Sons, who make the Bell's blended whiskey. And that's primarily what Dovetown was used for, is to go into Blentz. And they've got a mid, what I consider a relatively large operation. 4 million gallons a year or 4 million liters a year with 12 washbacks and 3 wash shelves and 3 spirit stalls and there. So when they have excess capacity to stop going into Bells, they make the Singleton. But that Singleton edition, the one they call Duffton, the Singleton of Duffton, is primarily sold in Europe. And you will notice I bought it in Canada. So so much for that. Glenn Doolan, also in Dufton, started roughly around the same time 1896 by William Williams, who named that guy, got merged into Distillers Company in 1925, had a full rebuild in 1962. And then they built an additional distillery in 1972 and then shut down the old one a few years later. Also similar size to the Duffton Distillery. 3.7 million liters a year. And they're primarily in blends. Williams and Old Par are made with Glendulin and then they make this version of the Singleton, which they say they primarily sell in North America. The weird one in this group is the Glen Ord distillery. This is actually an area called Black Isle, which is west of Inverness. So it's not the space. Normally it's a Highland, but it's a Highland the same way Dalmore is a Highland. Like it's way off in the northwest. It's not really in the Highlands at all. It's relatively close to the water. It's a much older, older distillery. There are records of distilleries on the blackout going back to the 1600s. This one was officially licensed in 1838, recognizing that the excise tax law comes in in 1824. Right. And it was owned by a, well, a wealthy family in the area who licensed it to a bunch of operators, most of which went broke and in 1923 got sold to John Dewars and Son. As in Dewars, which means that in 1925 they're acquired by Design Distillers Corporation, DCL. Interesting about Glenor. It's a much bigger operation. So in 1961 they stopped doing floor maltings, the old fashioned way of malting barley and turning it with a shovel. They switched to this thing called a saladin box, invented by a French guy. And that is a 50 meter, like 150 foot long, big steel box with augers in it to turn the malt over. Plus they push air through that to. To let it mature. They ran that for less than a decade and then they switched over to drum maltings, which they still use today. In fact, Diageo, which of course owns Glen Ord, has expanded the drum malting system there. And it's actually where malt comes from. For all the northern distilleries that Diageo owns, like nine or 10 of them get all into all of them, all out of Glen Ord, but the facility itself is huge. 10 million liters a year. And they make several other whiskies as well as a version of the Singleton that's supposedly only sold in Asia. And there's the Singleton itself. You can get in the 12 of 15 and 18 plus. It comes from possibly one of these three distilleries, so you don't know which is which. They're all cut to 40%. They're all colored to be consistent and they typically sell for about six, $45. But it brings back the core question, which is, is it any good? And the answer is sure. Now I've had the Dufftown Edition, which is a Speyside. So it's very mild. It's a very easy drinking. Like they call it a recruitment malt. This is a whiskey for someone who's never really had a whiskey or doesn't like whiskey per se because it's very easy drinking. There's certainly no pieces heat in it. There's no real heat to it. It's Relatively, it's a 40% alcohol. It's a good way to get into a whiskey. But if you like whiskey, you're probably going to skip it because it's just not that interesting. You know, it's just a pretty straightforward basic whiskey. A whiskey that people who like blended whiskey would drink. Notice the bottle style is a little different if you're, if you're looking at the picture of it where you know, we have a very typical whiskey bottle especially for single mall said, you know, sort of wine glass style bottle with a little ball half up, close to the neck. This is sort of the flask style bottle.
