Distillery OB vs Signatory Cask strength | Various ABV

Egypt in the Scottish Highlands

I’ve been to this distillery.

Location wise, it is a brilliant one, but its output is relatively small and, I dare say, a lot of people will never have tried it. Also, not many distilleries can boast the type of neighbours that Royal Lochnagar can. It’s literally a short walk from the Balmoral Estate.

A fair number of my Official vs Indy series have ended up focused on Diageo and their great industrial workhorses - the twelve-million-litre Glen Ords and the torrents that disappear into Johnnie Walker by the tankerload. Royal Lochnagar is Diageo too, but it's the exact opposite animal. This is the smallest distillery in the Diageo stable, turning out something in the region of 450,000 to 500,000 litres a year - which, in workhorse distillery terms, is barely a pony.

It sits on Royal Deeside, on the banks of the Dee and, as noted, Balmoral is its nearest neighbour. The distillery as we know it was built in 1845 by one John Begg, on a site where a couple of earlier Lochnagars seemed to have had a habit of mysteriously burning to the ground (competitors were allegedly involved in those incidents, which brings in a new angle to the temperament of the 1840s whisky trade). Begg, clearly a man who understood marketing, invited his new neighbours - the freshly moved in Queen Victoria and Prince Albert up the road – round to the distillery for a dram. This is the same Queen Victoria who allegedly had a particular liking for illicitly distilled whisky. They came, they tasted, they liked. In 1848 he was granted a Royal Warrant and a new name. This was the 19th century’s version of an influencer collaboration, there's been a "Royal" on the label ever since.

This isn’t in any way a chapter from the "Glen What?" school of distillery ignorance: Lochnagar is a mountain, not a loch, and self-evidently not a Glen. But it’s a fairly modest mountain at 1,155 metres. To clarify, that’s modest in Scottish mountain terms, but it’s obviously considerably higher than the highest peaks in England or Wales. So, the distillery is named after a hill it isn't quite on, just relatively near, in a way that feels entirely in keeping with Scotch whisky's general relationship with geographical accuracy.

When you look into the set up at Royal Lochnagar, it is interesting. It operates two tiny stills, worm tub condensers, dunnage warehouses with earthen floors full of casks still filled on site. As is often the case with Diageo, most of the product never sees a single malt label at all, instead it goes off to do the heavy lifting in Johnnie Walker, including Blue Label.

The location of this distillery is of course magnificent, and not the reason we had even travelled there. Nor was it Balmoral – I’m not a monarchist, but also not a republican. Rather, the reason for being in the area was to walk to the nearby Pyramid. Now, I’m sure that Pyramids in Deeside is a turn that at least a few readers won’t have seen coming.

The Balmoral Pyramid (officially known as Prince Albert’s Cairn) is a 35-foot-high, pyramid-shaped granite monument on the Balmoral Estate in the Cairngorms National Park, which was commissioned by Queen Victoria in 1862, as a memorial to her late husband. You can walk to it, as we did, after parking in the distillery car park. It is a rather enjoyable walk, especially with your 8-month-old daughter strapped to your chest in a papoose.

Which brings us, as it always does, to the bottlings. I didn’t do a tour at Royal Lochnagar, but I did pop my head into the distillery shop and bought a Distillery Exclusive bottling – a purchase I was discouraged from by the staff who tried to steer me towards the 40% 12 year old official bottling, the chill-filtered version which presumably has a wee nip of caramel for good luck. The independents are the real twist this time, because there genuinely aren't many. When you only make 450,000 litres a year and Johnnie Walker has first dibs, there's really very little left over for any cask brokers, so an independent Lochnagar is a properly scarce beast and, I’ll be honest, it wasn’t that easy to track one down, but track one down I did. Let's find out what the bottles have in store.

Review 1/2

Royal Lochnagar, NAS Distillery Exclusive Bottling, Batch 01, one of 5004 bottles, 48% ABV
£90 paid and available at the distillery

I can’t see anything about whether this is chill filtered, at 48% you would hope not, and nothing to say if it has colouring added. It doesn’t look coloured but there is always the chance it has been caramel bashed.

Neither does it have an age statement on the bottle, which is really unfortunate, although it doesn’t come across as particularly young.

Score: 5/10

**Average. In a Good Way.**
***TL;DR***
*Nothing special here*

Nose

The nose is really packed with fresh fruit, principally apples, pears and apricots. There is the predictable vanilla coming from the oak and a lot of cut grass but there is a solvent type note on it, like nail polish remover.

Palate

The taste is immediately a let down compared to the nose. It seemed quite drying initially with a medium mouth feel. There is some stewed apple and a bit of vanilla, but there seems to be a lot of wood influence on it which is possibly the cause of a slightly bitter back-end like over-stewed coffee grounds. The taste becomes sharper with time, and you get a hint of walnuts and a touch of caramel that disappears again too quickly.

It has medium legs but is lacking in much complexity that you would hope to have from a distillery release at a decent ABV.

The Dregs

Unfortunately, this is a bottle that is going to continue to lurk towards the back of my shelves, the most positive thing about it is probably the association with the distillery visit and a lovely clear day heading up a hill to the cairn with the family.

Score: 5/10

Review 2/2

Royal Lochnagar, Signatory Vintage Cask Strength Series, 1991 20yo, matured in a refill butt, cask number 374, bottled 2011, 54.8% ABV
£95 paid at auction, secondary only

This is a 1991 distilled dram, purchased at auction. From the colour of this you can see straight away that no one has been near it with caramel colouring. It’s an almost greenish yellow, like something that’s been coloured by cut grass. It’s been matured in a refill butt; however, as always, we have no clue what was previously in said butt.

Score: 6/10

**Good stuff.**
***TL;DR***
*Decent, but hasn’t yet reached the highs I’d hoped for*

Nose

The nose initially hits you with a strong, fresh, solvent-like note with a vegetative aspect. Working the smell a bit you can get lemon, fresh apple and a dusty note. It’s not the most inviting nose initially and you really need to persevere with it to get a slightly more appealing side - which is in there.

Palate

It tastes like a relatively straightforward scotch whisky, quite a thick mouthfeel and a bit oily. There is a lack of taste while the liquid is in the mouth. There is a density and taste you would expect from a youthful bourbon cask, quite sharp and tart - but not in an unappealing way. There is some burnt orange and a bit of spice in there.

Once the liquid goes it leaves a medium/long finish with mild warming and an almost aniseed taste and bitterness.

The Dregs

I had high hopes for this as a 20-year-old distilled in the early 90s. But, for a 20-year-old I would have hoped for something massively more interesting and complex than this. Yes, it has been sat in a bottle, unopened for 15 years since, but the bottle was in a Signatory tin so I’m going to hazard a guess that it has held up well.

As I have persevered with this I have come to like it more and more – and I wouldn’t rule out an upgrade on score after another month or so, now that it’s opened.

The nose on the Official Bottling is way nicer than the Signatory, but the flavour just lacks the element of complexity you would like to see from it.

This is a lovely location to visit a distillery. I would recommend it for the day out. A try-before-you-buy in the distillery shop though, I’m afraid.

Score: 6/10

Tried these? Share your thoughts in the comments below. CC

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