Infrequent Flyers vs. Flora & Fauna | 56.5% ABV & 43% ABV

Entering into Dailuaine-land through Diageo’s pocket.

What does one do when the whisky that unlocked your genuine appreciation for this inimitable spirit is not only out of production, but is commanding many hundreds of pounds at auction? One cries substantially, of course.

After that one regroups and thinks of alternatives, and for me that thinking was unsuccessful too because, what the hell did I know?

“Nothing”, was the answer - you don’t know what you don’t know. However, I did have some new whisky pals who were able to point me in the direction of some similar, available whiskies. The one that kept coming up time and again was something that looked very much like my unlocker of whisky - the similar off-white label and serif writing, wee picture of an animal and some fairly dark spirit inside.

Yes, my experience with this whisky started fairly swiftly when my buying finger secured a bottle of it at the very start of my whisky journey.

The bottle I wanted was Mortlach 16 Flora & Fauna. The bottle I got was Dailuaine 16 Flora & Fauna. Same age. Same label style. Same series. I opened it almost immediately and at the time thought it was interesting, but it had a very strange prickly heat that unsettled me. I’d been quaffing Glengoyne 18 and loving how the smooth sherried caramel spice washed down my facehole, but this Dailuaine didn’t do that - it almost burned. However, as my exposure to whisky increased, so did my frequency with sampling this bottle, each time enjoying the contents more and more - that burn notwithstanding. Soon I had a backup bottle stuck in my garage, you know… just in case.

The first bottle of Dailuaine soon disappeared and by that point I’d traded in my tired little rowing boat for a carbon clad, multi-hulled AC75 hydrofoiling racing yacht. I was now travelling over the whisky loch, not at the one knot that this phase of whisky introduction typically demanded, but at 40. The wind tearing the last threads of Dougie’s greying hair from his polished scalp. Such was the speed at which I acquired bottles of whisky, that the backup bottle of Dailuaine was shunted further and further back in the garage by week’s end, and remained in that darkened limbo for another 14 months.

In the intervening time I started expanding my net to include independent bottlers, spurred on after tasting Adelphi Bunnahabhain 21 year old and as a result being made aware of the concept of independent bottlers. Soon into my search I found a relatively new independent bottler by the name of Alistair Walker. Drawn to his bright labels and quirky branding, I started buying up the Infrequent Flyers releases, positively charged at the sudden access to interesting, full-strength casks of whisky - Miltonduff, Glenrothes PX and Knockdhu, I started amassing quite a few. The draw of these bottles was both the use of interesting distilleries, but also the price for what was often low outturn - a Glen Elgin 11 was one of only 99 bottles, but still sold at £65.

Alistair Walker Whisky Company was founded in 2018 and yes, you’d be right in thinking the Walker name has something to do with the iconic Billy Walker of GlenDronach, BenRiach and Glenglassaugh and now GlenAllachie fame: Alistair is his son. Working with his father at The BenRiach Distillery Co for 12 years, Alistair stepped out on his own after the place was sold to Brown Foreman in 2016 for a reported £285 million, to form the AWWC, bottling whisky from casks acquired in an industry he’s spent the best part of 20 years within.

The Infrequent Flyers name stems from the casking of unusual distilleries that one might not usually hear about, or have access to at cask strength, natural colour and non-chill filtered status, such as Port Dundas.

However, like most independent bottlers over the past couple of years, the release list seems to be creeping more and more towards the usual suspects of Linkwood, Glen Elgin, Undisclosed Orkney, Benrinnes and Aultmore. Prices are currently market aligned, with Royal Brackla 15yo going for £90, and Dailuaine 13yo, this bottle I have, going for £75. Sure, some bottles can be perceived as quite a high asking price for indies, but it’s still a viable prospect.

Dailuaine is a Speyside distillery, producing more than three million litres per year and one I’ve not really spent much time with, other than the Flora & Fauna release. A Diageo-owned distillery, it makes whisky mostly for the parent company blends and, as is typical for these Flora & Fauna releases, there is just the one official bottling: the Dailuaine 16yo. The real place for Dailuaine discovery rests in the independents, where the selection spread is huge.

It’s fun to compare whiskies in general, but even more so when you have the chance to compare what is purported to be the official expression of a whisky against one that’s unofficial. With the Flora & Fauna range, the whiskies are watered down to 43%, coloured and chill-filtered. With independent bottlings though, they’re often cask strength and very much non-tinkered with, so the ability to taste the raw distillery character before the Diageo officials get their money-raking hands on it, is always exciting. In this case I’m pitting the Dailuaine 16yo Flora & Fauna mass-market offering against Alistair Walker Whisky Company’s Dailuaine 13yo cask 306833 - a refill hogshead that produced 250 bottles. I think the results will be surprising considering I’ve not tried the Flora & Fauna 16yo since opening the Alistair Walker version, so I headed to the garage to root around the depths of Doog’s stash to uncover a very dusty, still sealed bottle of the Flora & Fauna. Passing by the illuminated super-shelf, I notice the Alistair Walker bottle is almost empty. It’s fair to say I’ve been enjoying, and sharing, this bottle quite a lot.

Review 1/2

Dailuaine 16yo Flora & Fauna, 43% ABV
£59 and available

Alongside the Flora & Fauna bottle and the Alistair Walker 13yo, I’ve poured, courtesy of Hamish, a Cadenhead’s Dailuaine 10yo, at 59.9% ABV, and a Douglas Laing Provenance Dailuaine 12yo at 46%, so I can get an even wider understanding of what Dailuaine is. I moved back and forth between the four drams and I realised something quickly - once you open the gate to the independent bottlings of Dailuaine, the official offering starts to wither and die very soon after.

Nose

Date sponge, sticky toffee pudding, warm caramel sauce. Bread baking, celery and strawberry vape on the wind. Freshly-washed jogging bottoms.

Palate

Peppery toffee, caramel tart, mineralic with orange peel, cola and strawberry laces. Going back to this after the others is a bit disappointing. Lots of green banana.

Score: 6/10

Review 2/2

Infrequent Flyers Dailuaine 13yo, 56.5% ABV
£75 and still available

Nose

Damp bricks in a warehouse, curry powder, sweet biscuits and floral spice. Caramel and toffee abound. A little bit of fruity mingling with baking spices.

Palate

Potent raw honey. Parma violet hint then biscuits - specifically custard creams. Slight savoury edge. Caramel, toffee, spice - usual tasty stuff.

Score: 6/10

The Dregs

The overwhelming sentiment, when drinking Dailuaine Flora & Fauna in isolation, is that of a tasty, fruity and well-balanced spicy dram, with some really good notes. It reminds me of my mother-in-law’s sticky toffee pudding. It’s engaging and I enjoyed my time with it.

When it’s levelled against other bottlings of Dailuaine, not just cask strength but even the 46% DL Provenance expression, the F&F bottle reveals a bit of a sicklier side - the whisky starts to taste tinted. I don’t mean I can taste caramel, because I don’t know what e150a tastes like, but it feels almost synthetic. Is this my subconscious speaking? I know that it’s both filtered and caramelised, and I know I’m trying to be as unbiased as possible, but there’s just something really homogeneous about it. Uniformly blah.

I guess the issue is that the bottle of Alistair Walker’s Dailuaine is coming at me at 13.5% higher ABV, and with that percentage also comes unadulterated whisky. Nothing has been stripped, filtered or adjusted to aesthetically recommended Pantone references, and so feels cleaner, deeper, and more flavourful. I’m getting a lot more of that sweet cakey thing, but also a punch of raw honey and floral notes that fully engage my interested brain. I also note that the aforementioned prickly spice effect that I found in the Flora & Fauna bottling when my palate was green, is appearing here even with a more weathered palate. I wonder if there’s something inherently inside the Dailuaine spirit that causes that sensation.

To check this I get going on the Cadenhead’s and this is the stuff that gets auld Doog’s heart motoring. I speak quite a lot about the “farmy” notes I find in whisky but what I really want to say is, “it smells like a distillery when you walk into it for the first time, having just lolloped up the hill because you’re late and the tour has already started”.

It smells of the place this liquid was made, and that just starts my foghorn blaring. I love it. I get immediate flashbacks to the incredible tours I’ve been on this year and the people I’ve met along the way. As that wave of nostalgia fades away I start to get really nice flavours appearing in this bottle. A salty, malty nose and a sweet brioche bready maltiness on the palate that washes into a bold mint leaf, which then tips over into a light touch of blue cheese. It’s changeable and inspiring.

I head back over to the Flora & Fauna and I find sugary nothingness. Back to the Cadenhead’s - the senses immediately perk up and the eyes dart from the glass to the glowing supershelf, trying to find something that might settle my rapidly accelerating excitement. I spot the next wee sample pot of the Douglas Laing Provenance and give that a go. This one is almost as good. It’s 46% so not as potent, but that farmy and malty note (distillery) is present, as well as a beautiful peppery spice. The facehole stretches into a wide smile when the mind's eye flicks up the picture of a summer salad served while sitting on the drying pavement after a sudden storm made way for sunshine. Rocket salad to be precise - peppery, earthy, vegetal, yet still marvellously sweet - petrichor, softly ashy and delicious.

Back to the Diageo crowd pleaser and yes, it’s disappointing by comparison. But does that make it crap? Once more I reach into the buckled metaphor drawer and whisk, triumphantly, another tired comparison to try and contextualise this experience. The Flora & Fauna is like a hot-hatch, let’s say a MINI John Cooper Works. It has a great paint job, fancy seats it goes like stink if you make the car work hard. You’d be quite happy wheechin’ about in this all the time. Then your mate shows up in a Porsche Cayman, and you realise the wee MINI is good, but this is naturally fast and way more “enthusiast”. Then another far, far richer pal arrives in their Mercedes AMG GT and you realise it’s all been a bit shit compared to this sleek bullet, and what about those subtle truffle coloured, Nappa leathered hand-stitched seats? Stepping back into the MINI, you’d be forgiven for feeling like it was a joke. Like this little raspy moped is supposed to be a car. No sir, that elongated V8 twin-turbocharged spaceship is a car, this… this is just a toy for the folk who don’t know any better.

Flora & Fauna Dailuaine is like that. On any other day you’d happily drink Diageo’s tourism special, because it’s a damn solid, reliable whisky - tasty, engaging and eminently drinkable. It’s a bit more enjoyable than the Blair Athol from the same range - has a touch more grip, spice and flavour to go around, but then you’re paying an extra £10 to get it over the Blair Athol. Pitched against other whiskies of far more potency though, with less plastic knobs and more power, it’s always going to come off third best. I must be cognisant of that in my thinking, for it would be a disservice to whisky should I call the Flora & Fauna under par.

It’s not. It’s frustrating, once again, especially at £60. It was a high six on taste and smell before the hiked price point finds it just scraping over the 6/10 wall. How about this, Diageo? Just slide some of that three million litres into a big old batch of beautiful bottled barleywater and let us have the experience of Dailuaine, Blair Athol, Linkwood, Benrinnes and many other of your distillates, as they should be enjoyed - unfettered. Because I’m loving what I’m finding in all these independents and I know many others are too. There’s flashes of interesting stuff in each of the Flora & Fauna releases I’ve tried, but it always feels like half of the picnic has been lost in the river. We’ve fished it out and salvaged what we could, but it’s now just a watery semblance of what it once was. I wonder why we don’t get official cask-strength bottlings from Diageo. Someone must know…

Score: 7/10

Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. DC

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