Craigellachie 23 & 31 Reviews [From Paris with Love]

Hi everyone,

Another exciting one today. Craigellachie has been building steam recently, in terms of support, good reviews, hype and, of course, a certain award.

That award was World’s Best Single Malt at the World Whisky Awards. As far as I know, it would have been a panel of judges tasting all the whiskies blind, so it’s better than certain people just declaring a whisky their favourite and everyone following suit and buying it.

Recently I got the chance to try both the 23 and 31. These weren’t compared together though. The 23 I tried at Whisky Live Paris and the 31 I tried at The Whisky Exchange Show in London.

The guy on the stand really didn’t want to give me any of the 31 because they’d already broken into their reserves for the next day, so many thanks for that one!

Craigellachie 23 46%

Colour: Light Gold

Body: medium

Nose: Classy with malt, sharp wood, honey, beeswax, old wooden shed complete with rusty tools.

Taste: Silky soft, honey and beeswax, some rubber, then lovely malty chocolate develops, vanilla, heather.

Finish: Medium/Long length. Heath-y, honeyed, and this very lovely malty chocolate.

A little sharp on the nose. Unbalanced in places but nice flavours.

78/100

Craigellachie 31 52.2%

Colour: Gold

Body: Medium/Full

Nose: Pastry comes first then you smell the good sulphur, complex chocolate, heather and honey, orange chocolate.

Taste: Spicy and sweet, builds this lovely complex malt and orange, herbal, heather, honey, great dark tea, jasmine tea too. Very complex.

Finish: Short/Medium length. Chocolatey but leaves quickly.

One for chocolate lovers. Arrival and development are fantastic but the finish lets it down. Would have been high 80's otherwise.

84/100

Thanks for reading!

Scotch Reviews #463-#464

Whisky Network Reviews #528-#529

Network Average: 74.3

Best Score: 92

Worst Score: 22

0-49 Terrible

50-59 Bad

60-64 Just About OK

65-69 Ok to Good

70-74 Good

75-79 Very Good

80-84 Excellent

85-89 Superb

90+ Magnificent

Full Disclosure Disclaimer: I currently work as a Brand Ambassador for Penderyn Distillery. The views expressed here are purely my own and do not reflect the views of Penderyn Distillery or The Welsh Whisky Company. I try to maintain as much objectivity as I can but feel free to take my reviews with as big a pinch of salt as you like. Furthermore, my rating scale is NOT based on a Parker type wine scoring scale or a school/college/university % or A-F grade score. You can find more on my scoring here. I apologise for any seemly low or 'bad' scores given with my system and am sorry I can't say only nice things. Please keep in mind that I am ethically compromised and am unable to produce 100% unbiased reviews.

Why is this here?