Caledonian 25 Years Old 1963 Cask #3669 (Moon-Import)

Caledonian, the Cally, was a grain distillery in the Haymarket district of Edinburgh, built in 1855 by Graham Menzies and once the largest distillery in Scotland. Moon-Import, the celebrated Italian bottler, drew this single cask in the late 1980s, when single grain Caledonian was almost unheard of. Distilled in 1963, it is among the oldest vintages of the distillery to reach a bottle.

The spirit was distilled continuously in a Coffey still for a light, sweet grain, then filled into a single ex-Bourbon cask. Twenty five years in American oak drew coconut and vanilla into the clean grain, building a soft, oily whisky. Bottled at 46 percent. By the time Alfred Barnard visited in 1886 the Cally employed over two hundred people and made more than nine million litres a year.

At this age it is mellow and sweet, coconut, vanilla and toffee over a gentle tropical fruit, the finish creamy and soft. A historic single cask from an Edinburgh distillery that closed in 1988, its like never to be made again. Coconut and vanilla come from the American oak, the lignin and lactones working slowly on the clean grain. The closure of 1988 fixed its character for good, so what remains in cask is all there will ever be.