Talisker Distillery

Talisker Dis­tillery is located at Car­bost, Scot­land; the only dis­tillery on the Isle of Skye. The dis­tillery is oper­ated by United Dis­tillers and Vint­ners for Dia­geo, and is mar­keted as part of their Clas­sic Malts series.

His­tory

The dis­tillery was built in 1830 by Hugh & Ken­neth MacAskill, and expanded in 1900. Dur­ing this early period, the whisky was pro­duced using a triple dis­till­ing method, but changed to the more con­ven­tional dou­ble dis­till­ing in 1928. The dis­tillery was nearly destroyed by fire in 1960, how­ever five exact repli­cas of the orig­i­nal stills were con­structed to pre­serve the orig­i­nal Talisker flavour.

Talisker was a favourite whisky of writ­ers Robert Louis Steven­son & Henry Vol­lam Mor­ton, and con­tem­po­rary bassist Christo­pher Sadlers.

The dis­tillery oper­ates five stills, two wash stills and three spirit stills. All the stills use con­dens­ing coils rather than a mod­ern con­denser, which are believed to give the whisky a “fuller” flavour (itself an indi­ca­tion of higher sugar content).

Char­ac­ter

Talisker is known for its above aver­age peat con­tent, and “salty” (or “spicy”) char­ac­ter. While the brand is gen­er­ally well-accepted and sells well, the high phe­nol level and dis­tinct taste may prove “chal­leng­ing” for the casual whisky drinker. The dis­tiller began pro­duc­ing spe­cial bot­tlings of the whisky for con­noiseurs in the early 2000s, with a 20 and 25 year bot­tling (where pre­vi­ously only a 10 year and 18 year were avail­able). The 25-year bot­tling was, despite being more expen­sive than the 20-year bot­tling, dis­trib­uted more widely. Both have proved to be rel­a­tively popular.

The malt used is peated to a phe­nol level of approx­i­mately 25 parts per mil­lion (ppm), which is quite high. Addi­tion­ally, the water used for pro­duc­tion, from Cnoc nan Speireag, flows over peat which adds addi­tional peati­ness to the whisky.

Both John­nie Walker and Dram­buie (a liqueur, not a whisky) use Talisker as a com­po­nent of their blended drinks; its pres­ence is most notable in Walker’s Green Label 15 Year Old Pure Malt.