Scotland, Speyside: Single malt whisky through the producing distilleries: history, making, production and tasting notes
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Cragganmore

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The distillery

Cragganmore

Cragganmore Distillery
Ballindalloch
Banffshire AB37 9AB
+44 1807 500 202

Owner: United Distillers & Vintners (Diageo)
Creation date: 1869

The Cragganmore distillery was founded by John Smith in 1869. Smith chose the place for the quality of the water of the Craggan burn, but also because it was closed to the Strathspey railway. John Smith really liked trains and used to travel by rail. However is was often forced to travel in goods wagons, because of his weight of about 144 kg. The cabins in the voyagers wagon were merely to narrow for him.
John Smith was a very experienced distiller, as he has been manager of the Macallan, Glenlivet, Glenfarclas et Wishaw distilleries. When he died, his brother George Smith (owner of the Parkmore distillery) managed temporarily the distillery, until John's son, Gordon Smith could take it over.
When Gordon took the distillery over, business was very good until the whisky crisis in 1989. Despite those difficult times, Gordon did not hesitate to make important renovation works. All the new available technologies were applied to the distillery.
Gordon died in 1912 and his widow, Mary Jane took the business over until 1923, when the distillery was acquired by White Horse Distillers, just one year before the death of White Horse's father, Sir Peter Mackie.
White Horse Distillers was taken over by D.C.L (Distillers Company Ltd.) in 1965, and Cragganmore doubled its production capacity the same year.
Available from independent distillers for a very long time, Cragganmore became popular when it became one of the six "Classic Malts", series launched on the market in 1988 by UDV, and about 30% of the production is sold as single malt, the remaining part being used in blends like McCallum's Perfection and White Horse. to top

The whisky

The sites below offer tasting notes for this distillery. Please click on the logo to access this notes.

France whisky-distilleries www.whisky-distilleries.info
Passionnés du malt passionnesdumalt.free.fr
Comaw Club o. mosellan des amateurs de whisky
English whisky-distilleries www.whisky-distilleries.info
Whiskyfun www.whisky-fun.com
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Geography

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Speyside

Speyside Map

The Speyside area is situated at the North of the Cairngorm mountain and goes to the Moray firth. It is delimited by two rivers: the Findhorn at the West side and the Deveron on the East side.
The area is named after the river Spey. Most of the distilleries take their water in one of its affluents; the Fiddich, the Livet or the Avon.
About sixty distilleries from Speyside are described on this site.

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Click on the map for a list of the distilleries of the area, on the title for further information
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Photos of the distillery

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