It was by chance that I first encountered Springbank, a singular Scotch whisky from Campbeltown, a decade or so ago.

I don’t drink a lot of spirits or cocktails. I prefer to save my limited alcohol capacity for wine. But I do have a taste for single malts, as well as Haitian clairin and agave spirits, and occasionally I indulge myself.

I had always gravitated toward Islay malts, loving the rich, smoky, briny flavors and underlying complexity. Ardbeg and especially Lagavulin are my favorites.

But back then I wanted to understand the malts from other parts of Scotland. So, I bought a few random, geographically dispersed bottles and, over time, drank them. They varied widely from the peaty Islays — lighter, fruitier, subtler. Some seemed simple, others were more intriguing, but one stood out, a bottle of Springbank 10-Year malt.

It was robust yet elegant, complex yet subtle, sweet yet salty. The contradictions drew me in. The texture was unlike most other malts I’d experienced. Many are light and limpid, but in this one, I could feel the substance in my mouth. It was forceful and direct. My wine-oriented mind went to the way good natural wines can feel so blunt and unmediated.

I fell in love with it. At my glacial pace of consumption, it took a few years to finish that bottle, but when, in 2019, I tried to replace it, I could not find it anywhere. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but then 2020 came, and 2021, and still, no Springbank.

I kept looking. Occasionally, I’d see a rare bottling — from 1968, say, or from an independent bottler — available for hundreds of dollars. I’d paid around $60 for my bottle in 2016. Finally, last fall, I found a bottle of the 10-Year for $140.

That’s a little steep for me. Still, I leaped to buy it. But why had it been so hard to find, and why now was it so much more expensive? In trying to answer these questions, I learned that Springbank was not only singular in the way it tasted. It was a total outlier among Scotch distilleries.

First, Springbank’s production is tiny. The big single malt brands like Glenfiddich, The Glenlivet and The Macallan sell 12 million to 18 million bottles annually. Even the smaller ones produce around 750,000 bottles. Springbank, until 2018, was making a relative dribble, about 120,000 bottles annually.

Whisky must also mature before it’s sold. The age statement on the Springbank 10-Year I bought means the youngest whisky in the blend was a decade old when it was bottled. That was fine until, around 2019 or 2020, when Springbank suddenly became unaccountably popular around the globe.

“Over the last 10 years, sales were increasing,” said David Allen, the marketing director for Springbank. “But during Covid, it just went through the roof. It was damaging — people who were drinking for a generation suddenly couldn’t find a bottle.”

Such scarcity is not solely an issue with Springbank. History is replete with stories of wines and spirits, like Overnoy-Houillon Arbois Pupillin from the Jura or Pappy Van Winkle Bourbon that seemingly overnight rise from obscurity to cult status. I’m not sure Springbank qualifies as a cult whisky, yet — the $140 I paid hardly compares to the roughly $1,000 that a bottle of Pappy might cost. But the search was frustrating nonetheless.

Flavien Desoblin, the owner of Brandy Library, a whiskey and cocktail bar in TriBeCa, is one of those Springbank fans who had difficulties finding bottles. His bar offers perhaps the widest assortment of Springbank whiskies in New York.

“I drop everything when someone mentions Springbank,” he said. “It’s magnificent, it’s everything you would want from a single malt.”

At Brandy Library, I tried some older Springbanks. A 15-Year was intense, textured, briny, oily, rich and much more complex than the 10-Year. If I could stomach the $250 retail price for a bottle, that would be my choice. A 21-Year was elegant and energetic with the sort of complexity you could taste many minutes after swallowing. It’s a special occasion sort of whisky, the kind you need a couple of hours to properly consider its qualities.

Not long before the pandemic, Mr. Desoblin said, people seemed to become much more interested in Springbank, even as markets for the whisky in Asia and Europe had been growing for a few years already. As Springbank spread its production over more markets, he said, it’s been harder for him to buy bottles when he wants them.

“And it’s now double the price I paid before the pandemic,” he said.

Why the sudden appeal? I suspect the qualities that make the whisky so unusual are a direct result of the producer being so unconventional.

Aside from its small size, Springbank is one of very few independently owned distilleries in Scotland. Most are part of big corporations like Diageo and Pernod Ricard. Until 2023, when its longtime chairman, Hedley G. Wright, died at 92, Springbank was family owned. After his death, Mr. Allen said, ownership was placed into three separate trusts under the theory that three groups could never agree to sell the distillery.

Campbeltown, where Springbank is situated, is on the Mull of Kintyre, a remote peninsula on the west coast of Scotland made famous by the Wings song.

“In the 1800s, Campbeltown was incredibly important,” said Noah Rothbaum, author of “The Whiskey Bible: A Complete Guide to the World’s Greatest Spirit.” “It was even called Whiskyopolis because it produced so much.”

But the quick succession of World War I, Prohibition, the Great Depression and World War II devastated Scotch producers. After the 1920s, just two distilleries were left in Campbeltown, Springbank, which officially opened in 1828, and Glen Scotia.

Early in the 21st century, Mr. Allen said, with only two distilleries left, the Scotch Whisky Association considered eliminating Campbeltown as an official whisky region. Mr. Wright, Springbank’s chairman, knew that with three distilleries, Campbeltown could maintain its recognition, Mr. Allen said. So Springbank bought and refurbished the abandoned Glengyle distillery next door, which it now operates separately, safeguarding Campbeltown’s regional status.

Mr. Rothbaum said no distillery today makes whisky the way Springbank does. Its production methods might be called eccentric or even quixotic. Alone among Scottish distilleries, all the processes of making a whisky — from malting the barley to fermentation to aging the whisky to bottling — are carried out on site.

Most other distilleries are highly automated. They buy the same commodity barley and farm out the malting, the first step in turning starches into fermentable sugars. They rely on commercial yeast.

But Springbank is not interested in those sorts of economies. It has used the same equipment, the same stills, for decades. It only buys local barley, employs its own proprietary yeast and adheres to labor-intensive production methods.

Mr. Allen says Springbank wasn’t interested in finding efficiencies. Keeping local people employed, he said, was too important to Campbeltown, where making and selling whisky is the primary business.

Mr. Rothbaum also said its system was good for the whisky.

“It allows a lot of control over the process, a great luxury,” he said. “The fermentation process is where a lot of the flavor compounds are created. Focusing on the brewing side can have a really big effect on how the whisky tastes.”

Almost all single malt Scotches are distilled twice. Springbank again deviates, distilling its whisky an awkward two-and-a-half times.

“I don’t know why you would make your whisky in such a bizarre manner,” Mr. Rothbaum said. “But if they didn’t do it, it would definitely taste different.”

I posed the question to Mr. Allen at Springbank, who basically said the same thing.

“Honest answer: We don’t know,” he said. “We’re simply following our process. We don’t want anything to change in our whisky.”

Springbank’s methods may seem archaic to some, but Dave Broom, whose brilliant “A Sense of Place: A Journey Around Scotland’s Whisky,” is a must for any single malt lover, makes the case that its methods and its focus on sustainability, human labor and self-sufficiency point to both the past and the future. He suggested that Springbank has provided a template for a series of small, new wave distillers that have sprung up in recent years.

What’s the best way to drink Springbank? I like to add a little bit of water. Mr. Allen said a little ice is fine, too. “Drink it how you like it,” he said.

As for finding Springbank, it seems much easier this year, although prices haven’t come down. But Mr. Allen said Springbank was increasing its production, to about 200,000 bottles. And, wanting to have at least some whisky on the market, it’s released a Springbank 5-Year, at 57.1 percent alcohol rather than the 10-Year’s 46 percent.

“More 10-Year will come out in 2028,” he said. “We’re in a bit of a bubble; it’s not going to last forever. Maybe in five years’ time nobody will be drinking alcohol.”

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