Caol Ila 18 years old (D.1969, B.1987) Gordon & MacPhail /56.5%/ 0.75l
- Caol Ila Distillery was founded in 1846 by Hector Henderson (the name of the distillery translates from the Gaelic to the “Sound of Islay’).
Product description
The Caol Ila distillery (its name translates from Gaelic to “Strait of Islay”) was built in 1846 by Hector Henderson.
Bulloch Lade & Co., producers of blended whisky from Glasgow, bought the plant in 1863 and invested heavily in the renovation of the buildings and the construction of a marina. In 1920, Bulloch Lade & Co. went bankrupt and its assets were taken over by a consortium led by DCL. Just seven years later, DCL became their sole owner and reactivated Bulloch Lade & Co. as a subsidiary; Caol Ila distilled in a single pair of stills, producing around 700,000 litres of distillate per year, mainly for DCL blends. In 1972-1973, the plant underwent a major renovation, the original buildings were demolished and a new, much larger distillery was built in their place, and the maturing warehouses were renovated. Today, Caol Ila, equipped with three pairs of stills, can produce 6.5 million litres of distillate per year.
The Caol Ila presented here is a whisky not only from another era, but also from another distillery, one of the true gems in our collection – distilled on 17th June 1969 from barley malted on site and bottled at cask strength (56.5% abv) by Gordon & MacPhail for Intertrade Italia on 22nd June 1987. The edition consisted of 273 bottles.