Dailuaine 12 Year Old James MacArthur Fine Malt Selection Single Cask #6911 Cask Strength Speyside Single Malt Scotch Whisky (1990s) 5cl Miniature

Dailuaine 12 Year Old James MacArthur Fine Malt Selection Single Cask #6911 Cask Strength Speyside Single Malt Scotch Whisky (1990s) 5cl Miniature

A miniature of cask strength Dailuaine bottled somewhere in the 1990s by James MacArthur.

Founded in 1982, James MacArthur has now been bottling single malt whiskies for over 25 years with you in mind.

Their policy is to select whiskies from Scottish Distilleries which are not very well known or have ceased to operate then bottling them at cask strength, thus introducing whisky drinkers to distilleries they had never heard of. This policy has been continued, with top quality single barrel bottlings from a wide selection of distilleries.

Only the best single casks are selected and bottled at cask strength. They don’t want to take anything away from the natural flavours of the whiskies, so there is no chill-filtration. Equally they don’t want to add anything to a good product, so no colouring is added. Just natural whisky, with maybe just a little help from a good bourbon or sherry cask.

About Dailuaine

Rarely seen as a single malt bottling (the occasional Flora & Fauna from owner Diageo, infrequent independent offerings) Dailuaine is one of the many hard-working distilleries which quietly provide fillings for blends. That doesn’t mean it is in any way boring.

The set-up – six large stills, condensers – suggests that a light style should be produced, but instead it produces a heavy ‘meaty’ make thanks to long fermentation, rapid distillation and the use of stainless steel in the condensers to cut down on copper interaction. That Flora & Fauna bottling (from ex-Sherry casks) shows this mix of richness and sweetness at its best.

At the end of the 19th century, Dailuaine was the largest single malt distillery in Speyside and also one of the most innovative in terms of design. It was built in 1851 by William Mackenzie and by the 1860s was being serviced by the Strathspey railway.

A complete rebuild in 1884 saw the installation of Scotland’s first pagoda on a kiln whose pitch was deliberately steep to minimise the contact time between peat smoke and drying malt, one of the clearest indications of how the old ‘Strathspey’ style was changing. In 1898, it merged with Talisker to form Dailuaine-Talisker Distilleries Ltd. The distillery perished in a fire in 1917, by which time it had become part of DCL. Saladin maltings ran from 1959 to 1970.

Dailuaine is also home to a dark grains plant and processes all of the spent grains from Diageo’s southern and central sites. If you see clouds of smoke rising from a riverside glen as you drive by the slopes of Ben Rinnes, that’s Dailuaine at work.

62.4% ABV

5cl / 50ml