Bottles of Banff single malt Whisky are extremly hard to come by. They come up for auction every once in a while and are sold for the price of a small car. Those that have managed to sip a dram report sherried notes with an oily texture and lots of wood.
Banff
Flavor Spiraltm
oak
honey
dried fruit
port
sherry
lime
fire
smoky
raspberry
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Banff
For heat, the stills were coal fed by hand, all the way until 1963.
Banff
Since the Germans seemed intent on attacking Banff and their little distillery, RAF Squadron 248 was placed on the distillery ground from 1943 through the end of the war.
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The distillery is long gone, but the town that gave it its name, sits right on the northwesterncoast of the Highlands, where the River Deveron spills into the North Sea.
Banff was destroyed by fire and Nazis. The first distillery was built in 1824, directly on Banff Bay. They had several small fires on site over their first years, but then a major fire in 1877 nearly wiped out the distillery itself (but the storage rickhouses emerged unscathed).
When they rebuilt, they added their own fire engine on site. Then -- as if we needed another reason to hate Nazi's -- in 1941, a squadron of Nazi Junker JU 88 fighter-bombers attacked, destroying warehouse No. 12. Decades of production were lost as the spirit poured into the local water supply, and flaming casks swept into town.
After World War II they set out to rebuild. But a coppersmith working on one of the stills, accidentally ignited alcohol vapors in the main tank. The still was destroyed, and a large portion of the distllery was damaged.
They managed to get things back together and continued to produce Whisky until the facility was mothballed for good in 1983. They still had spirits aging in the warehouses however, but in 1991 thelast remaining warehouse -- you guessed it -- caught fire and burned to the ground.
Distillery info:
CountryUnited Kingdom, Scotland
RegionHighlands
Established1824
OwnerDistillers Company Limited
TypeSingle malt
StatusActive
AddressBanff Distillery, Inverboyndie, Banffshire, AB45 2JJ United Kingdom