The GlenAllachie 12 Years old (700 ml)

For its first five decades, GlenAllachie was an anonymous blending workhorse for Chivas Brothers — virtually no whisky left the Aberlour site with its own name on the label. When Billy Walker acquired the distillery in 2017, he slashed output by roughly 87% and extended fermentation to 160–164 hours, among the longest standard fermentation windows in Scotland, deliberately maximising ester formation in the new make. The distillery sits at the foot of Ben Rinnes near Aberlour, Banffshire, drawing process water from two spring- and snowmelt-fed damheads on the mountain's north-east slopes — cold, mineral-rich water that supports a slow, clean fermentation. Distillation runs through lantern-shaped wash stills (36,300 L) and onion-shaped spirit stills (23,900 L) fitted with horizontal shell-and-tube condensers — a gravity-fed layout unique to the site — before the spirit enters a cask regime where over 30% of stock matures in first- and second-fill Pedro Ximénez and Oloroso Sherry puncheons and hogsheads, complemented by ex-Bourbon American oak forming the structural backbone. Every expression is bottled at a minimum 46% ABV, non-chill filtered, natural colour. The 12 Year Old draws on pre-2017 inherited stocks — the last generation of spirit before Walker's fermentation and cask overhaul — making it a transitional document between GlenAllachie's blending-house past and its current independent identity. Drink now through 2032.