Caledonian 31 Years Old 1987 Cask #7823886 (Duncan Taylor)

Caledonian was an Edinburgh grain distillery known as the Cally, built in 1855 by Graham Menzies and once the largest in Scotland. Its light grain went into blends; single grain bottlings are rare and come mostly from independents since its closure in 1988. Duncan Taylor bottled this single cask, distilled in 1987 in the distillery's final years.

Distilled in a continuous Coffey still for a clean, sweet grain spirit, it spent thirty one years in a single ex-Bourbon cask. The long maturation draws coconut and vanilla deep into the light grain, building an oily, dessert sweet whisky. Bottled at its natural 51.4 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 cask strength it is full and sweet, coconut, vanilla and toffee popcorn over a soft, oily body, finishing creamy and long. A characterful single cask from a vanished Edinburgh distillery, never to be made again. Few grain whiskies reach an age like this, the long rest turning a simple spirit into something deep and tropical. Grain whisky of this age is prized for the way light spirit and active oak meet over the decades, the wood giving most of the flavour.