Craigduff Single Malt Scotch Whisky

CraigduffSingle Malt Scotch Whisky

However Signatory later claimed that the whisky had actually been produced at fellow Seagram stablemate Glen Keith, a claim denied by Chivas, who continue to insist that it was made at Strathisla.

Another interesting feature of Craigduff is that the whisky was, in a sense, 'double-peated' - not only was peated malt used in production, but some of the water used was peated water made in Stornaway and run through the still to concentrate its peatiness again. This water was added to the wash before distillation. A curious collector's item.

Signatory's Research

Signatory's letter of explanation is below, although it should be said that this was subsequently denied by Chivas themselves.

"At time of bottling our first cask of Craigduff 1973, we believed, based on information available to us, that Craigduff was a peated malt from Strathisla Distillery.

Based on our own more detailed research, we have now established that Craigduff was, in fact, distilled at the nearby Glen Keith distillery.

Since first releasing Craigduff, there has been considerable “chatter” on how the whisky was peated etc. In this regard our own understanding is now as follows;-

Lightly peated barley from Glen Keith maltings was used in conjunction with controlled amounts of concentrated peated water, being added to each wash charge.

Peated water was brought in 45 gallon drums from Stornaway, on fishing boats into the port of Buckie. The peated water was run through the small still at Glen Keith, which was coupled to an angled condenser and water driven off to concentrate the peatiness in the remaining water. It is understood that 10 gallons of the concentrated peated water was added to each wash charge.

We understand the drive behind the experimental distillation came from a sister company in Japan. Apparently, during the course of the experiment, a sample of the concentrated peated water, whilst en route to Japan, was intercepted at Heathrow airport by Customs Officials who were convinced it was whisky in disguise, and decanted a fair bit of the drum before realising, too late, that it was in fact just water.

We apologise for any inconvenience that our wrongly associating Craigduff with Strathisla Distillery may have caused and would be grateful if you could update your web site and any other product descriptors to reflect the fact that Craigduff was actually made at Glen Keith.

Best regards,


Andrew Symington"