Dallas Dhu 1982 23 Years Old by Gordon & MacPhail

$525 AUD

40% 70 cl

This was distilled in 1982 and bottled after 23 years in refill bourbon casks.

Tasting Note

There is a sweetness to the nose with crisp clarity. Notes of cereal; malty barley and porridge oats with hints of wheat and a gristy, floury character. The palate is quite rich with a lovely smoothness. There is an equilibrium between barley sweetness and the tannic oak underneath. A development of fruit with gentle astringency, hints of zesty lemon with a little mandarin with honeyed oats. The finish is full of sugared barley and malt with silken ease as it makes its departure. (Master of Malt).

This product is located in Australia.

Distillery

Dallas Dhu Distillery

This is a distillery very close to my heart as I tried to buy it with a group of patriotic New Zealand Scots based in Dunedin, in the mid 1980s. The last distillation at Dallas Dhu was in March, 1983 but there was sufficient stock to underpin a modest commercial revival which would have been assured by the generally excellent condition of the stills and associated equipment. However, all this was around the time of the Guinness take-over of DCL and the creation of United Distillers and although this was a deal of great insignificance given all else that was going on, rather surprisingly our offer was eventually rejected. I believe that this had a lot to do with what had happened at Glen Garioch some ten years previously, but that’s another story.

After visiting Dallas Dhu in 1985 I had written as follows: “if anyone took a notion to creating on a modest scale a model traditional Highland malt distillery, Dallas Dhu would be an ideal site”. How prescient was that because it was sold in 1986 to Historic Scotland who turned it into a whisky museum.

Against that background, we have a small selection of Dallas Dhu independent bottlings available.