Caledonian Distillery, Scotland     founded: 1855 | silent
For more detailed mapping of the distilleries in the area from our whisky map page, use this link.

It was out first SSWC Walking Tour - and we sourced an old bottle of Caledonian to try on the site of the (semi-demolished) distillery. Throw in a bit of history, research and hip flasks - and we're good to go: Windowlene, sunscreen.. "Are there any other -een endings it smells like?". Maybelene! (maybe she's born with it..). Pine resin (reseen?). It had a woody smell and was a touch appley - with a sort of paint / stripper thing going on. A taster from afar suggested buttery wood varnish (oh yeah, that!), pineapple and banana, candied things.

Sweet at the beginning and "quite weird". Perhaps "intriguing" would've been a better word, but we didn't use it. For its weirdness was generally appreciated: Tastes "de-lish" and unlike a grain. In fact, this could easily be an island dram - it's sweet and then... smoky? It's hard to categorise but it "doesn't taste like rat piss", which is always a bonus. Quite acidic (lime juice?), not necessarily in a bad way. Very appley, fizzy drops, "like it". Weird - in a good way. Our proxy-taster thought it was like golden syrup.

Surprisingly bitter was one of the only finishes we came up with, but it also had a spiciness - perhaps a wasp sting? (said with love). Proxy-finishes were: salt, a little more banana, a chili hit, and tropical fruit. It was really nice to try this on the site of the old distillery - and what a great dram as well! You can also check out a previous review of SMWS G3.4 on the grains site.. these old Caledonians seem consistently interesting.

~£108 (70cl)

WhiskyBase: Caledonian 1979 SMWS G3.8   |   https://www.whiskybase.com/whisky/64030/caled
SMWS: G3.8 Eccentric and Exoti   |   http://www.smws.co.uk/whisky/G3.8_Eccentric_a

We've always scored out of 10 in our group (see number in red box, below), with scores regularly given across that spectrum. The value out of 100 below is adjusted to the scale most commonly used for whisky reviews, to allow for better comparison.

90 / 100