This month Charles MacLean celebrates the arrival of The Cardhu 12 Year Old to the World of Whiskies.
A gentle nose, with scents of violets and fresh fruits (melon, white grapes, fresh pears) - some sweety malty notes to start, but these disappear. Even fresher with water. a soft mouthfeel and a crisp taste - sweet and slightly acidic, with a trace of milk chocolate in the aftertaste.
A supremely 'accessible' malt - light and easy to drink, simple in structure, friendly and unchallenging. A perfect introduction to malt whisky.
Cardhu – pronounced ‘Cardoo’, and for a long time Anglicised as ‘Cardow’ – is probably most famous as the ‘heart’ of the Johnnie Walker blends, although it is so popular (particularly in Spain) that I wonder how much makes its way into them.
The distillery’s colourful history goes back many decades before 1893, however, when Walkers bought it.
It is situated on high ground above the River Spey – a remote spot on the edge of moorland until modern times. John Cumming took the tenancy of a farm here in 1811, and soon turned his hand to illicit whisky making – and was convicted three times in 1816 alone for this, although sympathetic magistrates let him off lightly.
It is said that his wife, Helen, was an expert distiller. There is a charming story about her being visited late one winter night by a small creature, shivering with cold, while she was distilling. Asked where she came from, the creature replied; “Seean o’Mannoch” (i.e. ‘the Fairy Hillock of Mannoch’). Helen gave her a dram of new whisky in a wooden bowl, and after the fairy had drained it she threw the bowl in the fire, saying: “Brew, wifie, brew, for you and yours will never want”.
And so it came to be. John went legal in 1824, and by the early 1830s was being assisted by his son Lewis. The distillery was tiny, but this did not bother Lewis, who believed in the quality of spirit to be had from small stills. However, the fame of his whisky travelled south; by the mid-1840s he was making 200,000 litres a year [today’s output is over ten times this], and most of it was being sold in Edinburgh.
Just as his father was helped by his mother, so Lewis was assisted by his wife, Elizabeth, who took over the farm and distillery on Lewis’ death in 1872. She was a remarkable woman, and soon became a legend in the whisky trade. By now demand for ‘Cardow’ far exceeded supply. First she persuaded her landlord to grant her a charter (or perpetual lease) of a site not far away, then, in 1883/84 she built a new a larger distillery, using the same source of water and peats. She sold her old stills to William Grant, who would soon build Glenfiddich Distillery. The annual output was now three times that of ‘Old Cardow’.
The late 1880s and 1890s are know as the years of the ‘Whisky Boom’. Blended Scotch was king and demand for it was insatiable. In order to maintain their supplies, blending houses bought or built distilleries all over Scotland – although Speyside was the style they favoured most: sweet and elegant, it was often described as having ‘finesse’. Elizabeth Cumming received several offers to buy, but resisted them until John Walker & Sons, already one of the leading blending firms, approached her in 1893. She agreed to sell on condition that her son, John, who had been managing the distillery for his mother for some time, was made a director of Walkers, with a minimum salary of £200 a year and £5,000 worth of shares in the company. He built himself an attractive mansion outside Aberlour village on the other side of the River Spey – ‘The Dowans’, now a good hotel. His son, Ronald, would in time become chairman of Walker’s and (now Sir Ronald Cumming) of the mighty Distillers Company Limited (DCL), which Walker’s joined in 1925.
Cardhu/Cardow is ranked ‘Top Class’ by blenders. As a result, only a tiny amount was bottled as a single malt until 1981 when, under pressure from Sir Ronnie, the DCL packaged it in the distinctive bottle it has today and began to support it with advertising. This was the first time the company promoted any of its whiskies as a single malt. Its fortunes lay with blended Scotch – household names like Dewar’s, Haig, White Horse, Black & White, Buchanan’s and Usher’s, were all part of its stable as well as Johnnie Walker – and the directors saw no reason to change this.
At the same time, Cardhu Distillery became the showcase for visitors – not the general public, but VIPs and journalists, by invitation. This was a dramatic change in policy for the DCL, which at that time was so secretive that even its distillery managers were not encouraged to talk to one another! Times were changing, and the Age of Malt was dawning.
