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Caledonian
The Caledonian distillery was a single grain producer that was located in the centre of Edinburgh, not far from its Haymarket train station. It opened in 1855 by Graham Menzies & Co and became the seventh member of the Distillers Company when it joined the trade association in 1884. It remained part of the group until 1988 when it was shut down by United Distillers as it sought to consolidate much of its predecessors disparate production.
Today the distillery site has been turned into residential housing, with only its 300ft chimney stack existing as a reminder of its former purpose.
As with all grain distillers, the the spirit from Caledonian was almost exclusively produced for the purposes of blended Scotch brands. As such, very little of its whisky has ever been bottled as single grain. In fact, an official Caledonian brand only existed very briefly, marketed by Scottish Grain Distillers Ltd. Simply presented, the square bottles were labelled with the distillery name in a Celtic-style font above an illustration of Edinburgh Castle.
Only a single non-age statement release was produced, with a special version released in 1986 when Edinburgh hosted the Commonwealth Games being the most notable version. Diageo later produced an official bottling of Caledonian as part of its Special Releases range in 2017, however no longer owning the trademark it opted to use The Cally brand name instead.
