Dailuaine 22 Year Old Rare Malts Selection Whisky Review!

Rare is definitely the right name for this one! This is a cask strength Dailuaine that was distilled in 1973 and bottled way back in 1996 at 22 years of age - when I was in the early years of high school!

No, Rare Malts Selection isn't some new independent bottler - this is an official bottling from what is now Diageo, and it was bottled before Diageo existed! The Rare Malts Selection series of bottlings was essentially United Distillers' precursor to what is now the Diageo Special Releases. The former began in 1995, with Diageo forming in 1997 and starting their annual Special Releases program in 2001, while the Rare Malts Selection releases continued until 2005. All had stated distillation years and age statements and were at least 18-years of age, most were matured in refill casks, and all were bottled at cask strength. Many of these bottlings are now legendary, and of course command ridiculous prices at auction where they've become a commodity that is traded for profit rather than bottles of whisky - particularly those from closed distilleries like Brora, Rosebank and St. Magdalene. For example one of the most valuable is the 1972 Brora 22-year old, which goes for around 6,000 GBP in the British auctions, or close to $11,000 AUD. Which would be enough to get three-to-four bottles of the recent crop of 35-ish year old Brora official bottlings, with change. And that $11K is not including the auction buyer's premium and insurance, which make quite the difference when we're talking about this amount of money. And let's not forget about customs charges if you're shopping from overseas - I'd hate to see the bill from Australian customs for something like that! It would likely be cheaper to fly to Scotland, pick up the bottle yourself and fly back again. Provided you were still under our 2.25L duty free limit! Other bottlings are more reasonably valued of course, but as expected for bottlings of this age you'd hardly call any of them cheap. 

This particular bottling is from one of Diageo's unsung workhorses, Dailuaine - pronounced "Dell-u-in" and Gaelic for "Green Vale (valley)" - which is located in the middle of Speyside, a few miles south of Aberlour. The distillery was originally founded in 1852, but was completely rebuilt and expanded just over thirty years later, and in 1889 it was the first distillery to receive a Charles Doig Ventilator, more commonly incorrectly referred to as a 'pagoda'. The distillery was purchased by Dewars and John Walker & Sons in 1917 and subsequently DCL in 1925, and has stayed within the DCL/United Distillers/Diageo empire ever since. These days Dailuaine has an annual capacity of over 3.5-million litres of spirit through ten washbacks (eight wooden & two stainless) and six squat-shaped pot stills, and like many of it's workhorse brethren that are quietly pumping out millions of litres of whisky for their parent company's blended whiskies, it is not open to visitors and official bottlings are few & far between. The only interesting part of Dailuaine's production is the contrast between a long fermentation and quick distillation, coupled with stainless steel shell & tube condensers rather than the usual copper - meaning a meatier, heavier spirit thanks to less copper interaction. The distillery site is also home to one of Diageo's two 'dark grain' plants, which process hundreds of thousands of tonnes of draff (spent grain) and millions of litres of pot ale (leftover liquid from distillation) collected from many of the company's distilleries, and processes it into cattle feed, and the by-product of this process is then sold as fertiliser. It may not be the most glossy & glamorous side of distillation, but effluent & waste (which is basically only water & spent grain with some dead yeast) handling & disposal is an important part of the process and can also be a decent source of income for the distillery owner/s, offsetting some of their production costs. 

Cask strength bottlings of Dailuaine are hard to come by, since as usual the only regularly available official bottling is the Flora & Fauna bottling - in this case a 16-year old that is not particularly inspiring and is bottled at the usual 43% ABV. There has only been one cask strength bottling as part of the Special Releases program in recent years, a 34-year old that was bottled back in 2015. Also as usual, independent bottlings of Dailuaine are far easier to find from the usual suspects such as Cadenheads, Gordon & MacPhail & Signatory Vintage. This Rare Malts Selection bottling is an official bottling, though, albeit from a different era - it was distilled in 1973 and bottled in 1996. Interestingly, the distillery's malting floor was discontinued in the early 1960s, but used mechanical Saladin box malting on-site until 1983, before switching to external sources from commercial maltings. Which means that this single malt, distilled in 1973, was made from barley malted in the distillery's own Saladin box! As with all Rare Malts Selection bottlings this Dailuaine is non-chill filtered and natural colour, was bottled at a cask strength of 60.92% ABV after its 22-years of maturation - cask type/s are not specified, but can safely be assumed to be refill hogsheads of some description. I'm lucky enough to be reviewing a sample of this Rare Malts bottling thanks to a generous fellow whisky nerd - I've only ever seen these Rare Malts bottlings through the glass at The Whisky Exchange in London, and didn't think I'd ever actually taste any of them. Obviously I wasn't going to miss the chance to review it! 

Rare Malts Dailuaine 22-year old, 60.92%. Speyside, Scotland.

Distilled 1973, bottled 1996. Presumably matured in refill hogsheads. Non-chill filtered, natural colour.

Colour: Pale gold. 

Nose: Floral, peppery & grassy. Dry grassy malt with a little runny honey, a good pinch of white pepper and a light chalky minerality that grows with more breathing time. Touch of liquorice straps (unsweetened). Lemon drops, butter toffee and a touch of pencil shavings. Pear juice around the edges as well. 

Texture: Medium weight, but syrupy texture and quite peppery. There's definitely heat here, (61% ABV), but it fades quickly. 

Taste: Runny honey, grassy malt and a big pinch of white pepper. More lemon drops and a touch of waxy sweet fruit - white melon, apricot & pear. Definitely sweeter than the nose led on but not overly so, still verging on the drier side. More liquorice straps and that drying chalky minerality again. 

Finish: Long length. Starts off rich with that butter toffee and waxy sweet fruit, then a pinch of dried leafy herbs before the white pepper and grassy malt returns. Burnt orange peel and drying wood spices, plus a touch of pencil shavings winding things up. 

Score: 4 out of 5. 

Notes: Very interesting! Having only tried a couple of Dailuaines so far I don't have much of a frame of reference for this one, but compared to the 16-year old Flora & Fauna you'd struggle to pick the two whiskies as being even remotely related, let alone from the same distillery. This Rare Malts Selection is a big, feisty, malty dram with plenty of power and a good amount of complexity that sticks to the drier, grassier side of Speyside without straying too much further afield. That chalky minerality is a surpsie, plus a good balance of spice vs. malt vs. oak. The cask influence is quite subtle, with almost no sign of the cask's previous contents, and only the oak itself asserting itself as pencil shavings. This dram has quite an "old school" feel to it as a result - no surprise since being bottled a quarter of a century ago definitely makes this is an old school whisky!

I imagine some water would calm things down a tad with this Dailuaine - to weigh in at 60.92% after 22 years of maturation means there probably hasn't been much angel's share, or at least not in the way of ethanol - but that's not how I do things in these reviews, mainly for consistency's sake so every whisky has an even playing field. And this dram certainly doesn't feel uptight or closed at all after the usual breathing time in the glass, despite being bottled roughly 25 years ago. What a great 'blast from the past'!

Cheers!