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Region: Highland
Owner: Inverhouse Distillers (Thai Beverages Ltd)
Founded: 1893
According to Dave Broom, Inverhouse Distillers master blender Stuart Harvey claims that Knockdhu’s spirit “… is typical of what most people think of as a ‘Speyside’. In fact, it might actually be more ‘Speyside’ than most Speysides!” Now, I’m going to have to disagree with him a bit there. You probably thinking I’m a bit mad, the guy is a master blender for goodness sake, surly he knows what he is talking about!
So, firstly the whole idea of a Speyside region is an anomaly to begin with, because the demarcation of the region has nothing to do with, in my opinion an overriding ‘Speyside’ style, because as we have seen already, Speyside malts can come in a number of guises, the can be light, elegant, floral grassy and citric, such as Glen Grant or Glen Moray,
or they can be a little more robust, fruity and weighty like Linkwood or Miltonduff and then they chuck in sherry casks and, well, that’s any ‘Speyside’ typicity lost! No, the whole concept of a ‘Speyside’ region is down to an area drawn up based on parliamentary boundaries, so you end up with absurdity of Knockdhu claiming to produce a ‘Speyside’ style and on the other hand you have Dalwhinnie, which lies within the ‘Speyside’ boundaries but by no way would you call it’s spirit a ‘Spey’ and the distillery certainly don’t.
Anyway, in my humble opinion, the characteristics that a number of ‘Highland’ distilleries share is a real minerality. This I believe can only come from one source and that is the Highland (I’ve given up on the apostrophes as they are getting annoying!) water. Yes, the Highlands are a large area and yes, over such a large area there will be differences in water sources, but as we like to keep things relatively simple, to me Knockdhu displays all that lovely granity character that I have come to expect from a Highland malt. Hang on so does Glentauchers and that’s a Spey! See what I mean, you can’t really blanket catagorise a geographical area by style! So, yes you could say that the style of Knockdhu’s spirit would put it in the robust and fruity Speyside camp but that minerality, to me, makes it a Highlander!
After a moderately long, 60 to 65 hour fermentation the clear wort is distilled in one pair of stills. It’s interesting to see that the distillery seems to have evade the current fetish for enlargement and appears to be quite happy the size it is. Both still feature boil balls and relatively tall necks, so initially it seems that the distillery is doing everything possible to create that light but fruity ‘Speyside’ style, although I believe that the distillation is relatively quick in order to keep reflux to minimum. However, once the spirit travels through the lyne arm it encounters a wormtub. I believe that the distillery uses fairly cold water in the wormtub which, as we have seen at distilleries like Dalwhinnie means that the spirit condenses pretty quickly and traps a reasonable amount of the sulphides that have evaded the reflux in the spirit. This is what creates the weight in the final whisky, but of course it will take time in the wood for that magic to happen, although as there isn’t a trace of sulphur in their 12 year old, it obviously isn’t as heavily sulphured as Dalwhinnie or Mortlach for example.
So, the end result is a beautiful spirit that balances a good weighty, fruity character with citrus and that enticing, ‘Highland’ minerality that comes from springs situated on Knock Hill. This weight allows it to cope with ex-Sherry casks well, as long as they are judiciously used and that weight also allows the spirit to mature extremely well too, developing a luscious, mature honeyed character, which thankfully Stuart Harvey doesn’t bury under a mountain of sherry.
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