Top Distilleries - 2018 Ed.

This page is dedicated to the distillery of the year. For the process behind the awards see the page 2018 Awards Overview and check out my pages on Top Brands and Top Owners! Without further ado... out of the 95+ different distilleries I've tried, the Whisk(e)y Ranker Top Distilleries of 2018 go to:

Bronze Medal

Bruichladdich
Whisk(e)y	Colley Rating	Page Rating
Bruichladdich 14	73.4	18.1
Bruichladdich 16	93.7	46.7
Bruichladdich 3DC	81.7	43.2
Bruichladdich Bere-Barley	73.4	40.9
Bruichladdich Laddie 8	60.8	11.7
Octomore 5.1	77.0	41.4
Octomore 6.3	68.8	15.5
Octomore 7.2	75.4	40.1
Port Charlotte 10 Tro Na Linntean	76.8	52.4
Port Charlotte 11 Eorna Na H-Alba	72.3	42.2
Port Charlotte CC:01	100.0	93.6
Port Charlotte The Peat Project	71.4	34.3

A well deserved bronze medal goes to the Bruichladdich distillery.  It's a tale of two very different whiskies - the lighter Bruichladdich brand and the heavily peated Port Charlotte and Octomore brands.  This year I've only been able to sample the Port Charlotte CC:01 so much of this award is based on past performance.  Looking over this group, I see the heavy influence of a previous neighbor who I had the pleasure of drinking with after the kids went to bed.  He would always pick up a bottle of the latest Octomore release and I recall one night where we polished off a large amount of a bottle of Bere-Barley (vaguely recall that is).  Besides the Port Charlotte CC:01 currently holding the spot as my favorite all time, the Bruchiladdich 16 also lands in the top 10 and most of the Bruichladdich product makes up a solid block with normalized Colley ratings in the low-mid 70's.  The "laggard" of the group is the Laddie 8 and is likely under scored due to a very strong strength of schedule.  Outside of my little blog and rankings, the distillery continues to experiment not only with whisky but also their ambitious project of locally sourcing as much as they can.  Based on past performance, I look forward to trying their next experiment!

Silver Medal

Bunnahabhain
Whisk(e)y	Colley Rating	Page Rating
Bunnahabhain 12	79.4	48.6
Bunnahabhain 13 Sherry Cask (1997-2010 Adelphi)	54.9	3.1
Bunnahabhain 19 (1992-2011 Carn Mor)	90.9	58.0
Bunnahabhain 13 (1997-2010 MacPhails)	84.8	69.7

This past year I've enjoyed a bottle of 13 Year Old Bunnahababhain distilled in 1997 and bottled by MacPhails. There is nothing that beats the nose on this whisky - it has the creamy, cereally, and fruity smell baked oatmeal with pears (our recipe is from the Smitten Kitchen cookbook). I was also reacquainted with the briny and sweet 12 year old at a bar with a friend.  Bunnahabhain is one of those distilleries that I've always meant to explore but when I get to a liquor store there inevitably ends up being something more attractive.  Of the four Bunnahabhain expressions I've had, only the 12 Yr Old is from Bunnahabhain's core line and the other three are from independent bottlers. Unfortunately, earlier on I wasn't as rigorous in my record keeping and didn't record who bottled the whisky.  After some internet searching I think the 13 year old Sherry cask was bottled by Adelphi and the 19 Year old was done by Carn Mor.  So I know I've really enjoyed the product created at the Bunnahabhain distillery but I don't feel I know the brand. But that will change a bit this year as someone bought me a bottle of Bunnahabhain 12 off my Christmas list!

Gold Medal

Lagavulin
Whisk(e)y	Colley Rating	Page Rating
Lagavulin 12 Yr CS	93.0	80.8
Lagavulin 16	84.4	90.5
Lagavulin 18	63.6	6.3

Unlike the differing varieties of the silver and bronze winners, the Lagavulin distillery excels at making wonderfully smooth whisky dominated by peat and accentuated by fruit... and I love it!  I tried out a few different sets of prose to extol the virtues of Lagavulin... but none of them were anything more than rehashing what everyone else has already said so I'm not going to rehash them.  The three 3 Lagavulin expressions I've tried - 12 (2017 Ed), 16, and 18 - have a combined record of 131-11 and the 12 and 16 break the top 10 in my Page Rank and both are in the top 20 in the Colley Rank.  I appreciate Bruichladdich for continuously experimenting but I also need to give credit to Lagavulin for continuing to excel at consistency!

Honorable Mentions:
Oban, Cragganmore, and Knockdhu Distilleries get an Honorable Mention because each scored higher than the three awarded above.  But their scores were due solely to the Oban 14, Cragganmore 12, and AnCnoc 12 and I don't want to judge an entire distillery based on only one expression.  Solution: In 2019 I'll make it a point to try something else from these three distilleries so next year they'll at least meet the qualifications.

I also want to give an honorable mention to MGP. Love them or hate them for being the not-always-transparent source of a number of whiskies, they do make very good whisky (and the transparency thing really isn't their issue). MGP was the second highest rated non-scotch distillery and that says something. The Dad’s Drinking Bourbon podcast has an excellent discussion of MGP covering the price inflation of some of the whiskies that created from MGP and emphasizes that much of the juice out there now comes from when it was the Seagrams distillery. I’d recommend checking it out here.  I don't hold anything against MGP for any of this... they make good stuff and you can get it at a good price or pay a premium if you so choose.

Finally, if you've made it this far into this post, you may actually be interested in the full table of all distilleries.  Here's the top 25%, happy to send more stats upon request!

Distiller	Colley Rank	Page Rank	Sum
Oban	86.7	80.0	166.7
Cragganmore	80.8	66.7	147.5
Knockdhu	83.5	59.8	143.3
Lagavulin	80.3	59.2	139.5
Bunnahabhain	77.5	44.8	122.3
Bruichladdich	77.0	40.0	117.0
Mortlach	81.0	33.3	114.3
Balvenie	73.8	39.8	113.6
Laphroaig	72.0	41.0	113.0
Aberlour	69.8	41.6	111.4
Glenmorangie	67.3	42.1	109.4
A. Smith Bowman	70.0	37.5	107.5
Kilchoman	75.4	27.4	102.8
Bowmore	68.6	31.6	100.2
Talisker	65.0	30.5	95.5
Caol Ila	57.4	36.7	94.1
MGP	65.5	26.7	92.2
One Eight	69.2	21.5	90.7
Four Roses	53.2	36.5	89.7
Ardbeg	54.3	32.4	86.7
Aultmore	69.8	15.0	84.8
Glenfiddich	60.9	22.7	83.6
Angel's Envy	60.9	22.2	83.1
Tobermory	47.6	34.8	82.4