Aberlour distillery is a top quality Speyside distillery with a reputation for exceptional sherry matured single malts, and can be considered as a no-frills, good value alternative to Macallan. While other distilleries have made much noise about exclusive sherry cask maturation and their ‘supreme quality', Aberlour has been producing some of the finest, most elegant and delicious sherry matured Speyside malts for decades. One of the gems of Scottish malt whisky, Aberlour is a distillery well worth taking that little bit of extra effort to get to know.
Aberlour Distillery
Founded: 1879
Stills: 2 Wash Stills, 2 Spirit Stills
Capacity: 3.8 Million Litres
Water Source: Ben Rinnes Mountain
Owners: Pernod Ricard
1960-1973: Great Casks and Old School Beauty
Aberlour in the 1960s was one of the larger distilleries operating in the period following an expansion in 1945 that made it ready for the post-war era's inevitable whisky boom. Traditional production techniques were still in practice during these decades and when combined with the distillery's usage of phenomenal casks the resulting whisky from this time is predictably fantastic.
The best examples are the early official bottlings of Aberlour from the 1960s through to the 1980s, which were a mix of no age, 8-year-old and 12-year-old bottlings, all in square cube-shaped bottles. These can still be found at auctions at relatively reasonable prices, which is a blessing as the whisky inside is utterly stunning: waxy, minerally, immensely spicy and herbaceous, with notes of Riesling, barbeque sauce, oily vinaigrette and fruit.
If you have the opportunity to try these old beauties you should always take it, because they are all excellent examples of old school whisky-making and most offer a glimpse of Aberlour's incredible raw flavour as a spirit, as very few of them were overtly sherry influenced. However, there was also a 1964 ‘vintage' bottling from the early seventies that was fully sherry matured and is probably one of the finest examples of Aberlour in bottle anywhere. Many of these Aberlour distillery bottlings were also at higher strengths (50% was very common) and provided the inspiration for this century's incredible Aberlour A'Bunadh series.
There are also several longer-aged official bottlings from this period. Most are stunningly clean sherry-matured malts, although they lack something of the power of the younger official bottlings. They are expensive these days but well worth trying if possible, as they display big rounded fruit qualities with wonderful layers of rancio, tobacco leaf and tea. Great long aged old school malt whiskies, in other words.
1973-Present: Growth and Elegance
Aberlour was expanded and refitted in 1973. New condensers were installed, the stills were now steam heated and fermentation techniques started to conform with the rest of the industry and its sudden, widespread fascination with commercial distiller's yeast. This meant that the immense oiliness and coal-like qualities of the distillate were tamed.
In place of the old style, a much more elegant and modern expression of Aberlour started to appear. The Aberlour distillate character was now more focused on soft fruits, spices, and chocolate notes in the sherry expressions, while the bourbon-matured versions became quite malty, green, aromatic and sweet.
Nowadays, Aberlour manages to remain one of the few major distilleries with a concise and reasonably consistent core range that is not dogged by excessive pricing, silly wood enhancements or overly pompous marketing. The widely available bottlings are well crafted examples of Aberlour's wonderful house style combining ex-bourbon and sherry cask maturation and finishing to create a superb balance between the taut richness of sherry and a lively freshness that keeps the whiskies complex and interesting. The 18-year-old in particular is consistently excellent.
There are also the legendary Aberlour A'Bunadh bottlings. First appearing at the end of the 1990s, these are cask strength, No-Age-Statement, small batch bottlings of Aberlour matured solely in fresh sherry casks. They are extremely powerful whiskies - most A'bunadh editions clock in between 57-60% cask strength - that reveal intense notes of spice, dark chocolate and stewed fruits. They are also good value and offer a style of whisky that is certainly an acquired taste, but if you like big and bouncy sherry then A'Bunadh delivers plenty.
A'bunadh's success greatly enhanced Aberlour's profile among malt fans, and the majority of the core range is now bottled in the squat, dumpy bottles that A'bunadh first appeared in. The A'bunadh series also spawned a couple of spinoffs, Casg Annamh - a mix of ex-bourbon and Oloroso sherry casks - and A'bunadh Alba, which is matured exclusively in American oak.
In September 2020 Aberlour received planning permission for a large scale distillery rebuild and expansion, which includes full redevelopment of the production area including the mash room, the tun room and the still house. The plans include a new visitor centre, 16 new washbacks and four new stills, which would bring Aberlour to eight stills in total and should double the distillery's capacity to 7.5 million litres.
So long as Aberlour is able to maintain its supplies of good quality wood and its healthy no-nonsense approach to its product range and pricing then it should be able to remain a whisky of great quality and popularity. Aberlour is an exemplary distillery.