Blair Athol

Region: Eastern Highlands

Owner: Diageo

Founded: 1798

Even though the distillery is one of the oldest in Scotland, not much has actually happened over the years to it. There are no tales of mysterious, adventure loving Victorian owners, ghosts, fires or weird happenings. Obviously, it has changed ownership a few times over the years, but the reality is that the distillery just quietly goes about its business with practically no fuss or bother.

Since its purchase by Arthur Bell & Sons in 1933, the bulk of its production has gone into their range of blended whiskies, along with malt from Inchgower, Dufftown, Glenkinchie and Caol Ila. The only distillery release is a 12 year old in Diageo’s ‘Flora & Fauna’ series, which has been matured in Oloroso sherry casks. The proportion of the malt which goes into Bells is matured in ex-Bourbon casks and both of these cask types can be found in the numerous independent bottlings.

Bells itself, isn’t a bad blend, but considering one of its component malts is a fully paid up members of the Axis of Evil (Dufftown) and the other (Glenkinchie) flirts with relegation to that select club, a pretty blend it certainly isn’t, if one is being generous, then one would call it a workman-like blend. Anyway, this isn’t about blended whisky, so let’s talk about the malt itself. With any distillery that uses ex-sherry casks for the maturation of their spirit, there is always the risk of sulphur blemished spirit. However, I’ve only come across one very slightly sulphur tainted bottling in all of my tasting’s, so one can only assume that the distillery has a pretty good casks sourcing policy. The official distillery release is pleasant enough, if sometimes it can be a bit variable, so to get any kind of idea of the character of the distillery, one has to turn to the independents.