Glasgow has always been a city that punches above its weight, and the whisky now being produced in its heart is no exception. The Clydeside Fortnight is a bottle I’ve been eager to talk about for months, and having finally spent proper time with it, I can say with confidence that it represents exactly what whisky should be: interesting, affordable, and backed by a story worth telling.
The Clydeside Distillery opened in 2017 inside a historic pump house on Queen’s Dock, producing around half a million litres of whisky a year. What makes the heritage remarkable is that the great-grandfather of the Morrison family, who still owns and runs the distillery today, was part of the team that built the dock itself and may have helped construct the very pump house where the spirit is now made.
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All the water comes from Loch Katrine, the same source that feeds Glasgow’s famously pure tap water. The Morrisons also have connections to Àd Ràth, and they only peat barley for two weeks of the year, spending the remaining fifty producing unpeated single malt.
The Fortnight is the peated expression: six years old, bottled at 46%, natural colour, and non-chill filtered. At £36 direct from the distillery, it is a genuinely impressive proposition.
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On the nose, it is dominated by bright, almost burnt citrus oil, baked lemon, orange pith, and a lovely undercurrent of cake batter with a touch of pineapple upside-down cake sweetness. The peat is soft and sweet rather than aggressive or medicinal.
On the palate, warm toffee notes open proceedings before those flamed citrus oils return. There is something almost cocktail-like about it, with a gentle, building heat of ginger and black pepper.
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READ THE STORYThe finish is where the smoke truly comes alive, popping with an intensity that the nose only hints at, then flowing through waves of salt, pineapple, caramel, and burnt herbs. It just keeps morphing and doing really, really nice things.
I would suggest enjoying it neat, though. A drop of water flattens the nose considerably, pushing it toward a more new-make character, even if it does coax out some pleasant waxy, tropical fruit qualities on the palate.
This bottle earns a solid eight from me. Between the Fortnight, the Torabhaig, the Glen Scotia 7-Year-Old Campbeltown Malts Festival release, and the Ardbeg 10 Cask Strength, young peated whisky is having a remarkable run in 2026.
Peated whisky fans will tell you every year is their year, but in terms of fun, affordable, well-balanced drams, the evidence is stacking up.
The Clydeside Fortnight is a fabulous bottle: complex, characterful, and rooted in a genuine Glasgow story.
If you have not yet explored what this distillery is doing, now is the time. Have you tried any of the newer Glasgow distillery releases, and how do you think they compare to the more established peated malts?
To see my full tasting of Clydeside Fortnight, check out my YouTube video.
