Since my partner works for the company that has Glencadam we managed to squeeze in a little visit on our way back from our lovely days away in Cullen. If everything goes to plan the distillery will open to the public once they have finished their Visitor Centre, which is planned for their 200th anniversary in 2025!
The Glencadam Distillery
Glencadam dates back to 1825 and are now under the ownership of Angus Dundee since 2003, who also owns Tomintoul Distillery. They produce single malts with various age statements varying from fully ex-bourbon matured as well as using various finishes – White Port and Sauternes being some of the most recent. The whisky tends to be bottled above 46% and as non-chill filtered and natural colour. The distillery lies in the small town of Brechin, where you can also find the Caledonian Railway. It will be so interesting to see how things will change as the Visitor Centre comes in and can allow more frequent visitors to its doors. It’s definitely an old distillery on first glance. One that wasn’t built with visitors and tours in mind, but as a working distillery.
Warehouses & Water Wheels
They have warehouses on site, where No 2 A, which you can see here below, is situated right by a dog pen. This is where the Distillery Manager Doug’s two massive caucasian shepherd dogs are keeping guard against any unwanted visitors. Not a good idea to try to steal casks – and even less so here… Right next to the still room they have also re-installed a water wheel, which originally sat in the distillery during the 1900’s which is an impressive feature that makes the distillery very unique – as I believe it might the only Scottish distillery with an internal water wheel, or at least the only one I know of.
Outside the distillery there’s plenty of flowers and greenery so I think it will be a good one to visit once open, and Glencadam also tends to be a little bit of a hidden gem in the Scotch whisky world so if you haven’t tried it yet I could definitely recommend it. My current favourite is the 15, but since it’s quite a big range there’s something for everyone.
Glencadam 19 Oloroso Finish
As we weren’t stopping for long we only did a little tasting and chose the 19 year old, which has an Oloroso finish and is quite difficult to get a hold of at the moment. As Glencadam tends to have a quite fruity and tropical spirit it marries really well with the gentle oloroso character coming through in the 19 which isn’t overpowering but just offer a nice additional layer of flavour. Hopefully we will see the 19 back on the shelves soon.
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