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Dallas Dhu was completed in 1899. It was one of several distilleries located on the estate of a local laird, Alexander Edward, and the following year he handed Dallas Dhu over to the proprietors of Roderick Dhu, one of the popular whisky brands of the day. It was a prime site for distilling with water from the Altyre Burn and local barley, for long one of the best growing districts in Scotland. It was near the Highland Railway’s main line and the distillery had its own siding.
Due to the two World Wars, the depression and a fire that destroyed the stillhouse in 1939, production was an on/off affair until 1947 but the distillery played its part in the whisky boom of the following 30 years. One of the reasons Dallas Dhu kept its Victorian form was the limited water supply. Had there been more of it, much of what we see today, both inside and out, might well have been removed and replaced in pursuit of expanded production and efficiency.
It is a delight to walk round the floors and buildings being able to see in place and in sequence all of the machinery and equipment that is only partly present elsewhere. The barley-loft, the malting floor, the kiln, the malt mill and all the way through to the stillhouse and warehouses – they are all there.
Electricity did not reach Dallas Dhu until the 1950s and the waterwheel, driven by the overflow from the worm-tub, still contributed to the power pool into the 1970s. There is a single pair of stills, looking as if they could get under way at any moment.
Dallas Dhu had some complexity and, although not quite a ‘big’ whisky, it had a silky, glyceral texture and botanical/floral bite. The final distillations were in 1983, so batches continue to crop up. Some 18-year-old and 1978 were recently available. |
Dallas Dhu
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