Last Night's Tipple

It's not uncommon for Speyside Scotches to be referred to as "feminine," usually when in the next sentence the writer refers to an Islay Scotch as "masculine." I'm not sure what this means except that Speysides typically don't have an aroma that explodes out of the bottle and hammers the drinker over the head. This is not to say that Speysides cannot be extremely aromatic and flavorful. Macallan is one such, and Cragganmore is another one.

Cragganmore is another distillery that was part of the Great Scotch Explosion of the second half of the 19th Century, having been founded in 1869 by John Smith. Mr. Smith is known largely because of the strange design that he arrived at for Cragganmore's spirit stills (Scotch is typically distilled twice, once in a larger wash still and a second time in a smaller spirit still). He made them small and narrow, with a flat top and a lyne arm exiting the still at a right angle to the neck. His goal in making his stills this way was to produce a relatively light and aromatic spirit, and he succeeded. Cragganmore claims on its neckband that it is "an elegant sophisticated Speyside with the most complex aroma of any malt... astonishingly fragrant with sweetish notes and a smokey maltiness on the finish," and Diageo, on its Classic Malts website, quotes spirits author Michael Jackson as saying that Cragganmore is "[t]he most fragrant of whiskies." It's not all marketing hype. I don't know about it being "the most fragrant of whiskies," but it has a powerful honeyed nose with hints of thyme. The palate is very malty, with some grassiness on the finish. This is one of my favorite Scotches: fragrant, appetizing, and drinkable.