For my next distillery focus, I’m going to Speyside, my home for many years, and the Ballindalloch Distillery. These guys were practically my neighbours when I worked at Glenfarclas so I was really keen to find out a bit more about what they were up to. I moved away from Speyside just after they opened, so although I often drove past the distillery while it was being built, I’m ashamed to admit that I haven’t yet had the opportunity to visit. (Something I hope to remedy very soon!) 

While the Ballindalloch Distillery is a new venture, distilling on the Ballindalloch Estate  certainly isn’t; In fact, the Ballindalloch Estate used to feature fairly prominently in my descriptions of the early history of Glenfarclas. You see, the Glenfarclas Distillery was founded by tenant farmer Robert Hay in 1836 on Rechlerich Farm (part of the Ballindalloch Estate). When Robert Hay died in 1865, local farmer John Grant took over the tenancy and purchased the distillery at the same time (for the bargain price of £511.19d). Since his interests lay in farming, rather than distilling, he initially put in a manager, John Smith, to run the distillery for him, while he concentrated on farming. A few years later, in 1869, John Smith left Glenfarclas to establish the Cragganmore Distillery, in conjunction with the 4th Baronet of Ballindalloch, Sir George Macpherson-Grant. 

At that point, John Grant’s son, George, took over the running of the Glenfarclas distillery and farm and it has remained in the family ever since. They only ceased being tenants of the Ballindalloch Estate in 1930 though when George Grant (John’s grandson) bought the freehold. As far as I am aware, Cragganmore is still on Estate grounds, and there may well be other distilleries which were, or are, on the Estate but I’m not entirely sure of the full geographical reach. It’s certainly a fairly big area, covering some 7000 hectares today (around 27 square miles) and presumably much more than that in the past.

Anyway, enough about the history, let’s find out what’s going on in the present! Brian Robinson, the Distillery Host, very kindly answered my questions; ​

Q. If you were to compare your distillery to any other existing or closed one, which would you most aspire to be like and why?
I’m not sure that I would make any direct comparisons to specific distilleries. We are fairly typical of a Speyside style but with a more complex spirit character. My aspirations would be allied to any distillery that has produced a wonderful whisky and built a following of people who appreciate and understand the hard work that goes into making something special!

Q. Are you open to visitors? Can we buy your product, either in bottles or cask? If not now, then when?
We do indeed welcome visitors, but we do not have a Visitor Centre as such. Tours are offered by appointment and I will then tailor the visit to the guests who book. I can offer tours that start at £35 per person and last around 2½ hours through to a day spent working with Colin, Phillip and Mike. Called The Art of Whisky Making, it allows up to 2 guests to get hands on for the day getting involved with everything that we do here.

As far as buying any product is concerned, as I mentioned earlier, there is a bit of a wait there I am afraid. I do have a very small Private Cask program with no more than 25 casks available each year. If anyone is interested, it is best to email me directly and I will discuss the program with them.

You can contact me at brian@ballindallochdistillery.com and follow us on Facebook for all the latest updates.

For my next ‘newbie’ focus, we are heading to Scotland’s industrial heartland - Glasgow and the Glasgow Distillery Company Limited (not to be confused with the Glasgow Distillery project by Morrisons Glasgow Distillers Ltd, which as far as I am aware is still in the early planning stages).

​While Glasgow sometimes gets a bit of an unfair reputation from those that don’t know it, personally I love the place - I lived there for many years as a student so have a fairly in depth knowledge of the consumption of alcohol there, if not the making of it! 

As Scotland’s largest city, and industrial and trading hub, Glasgow has a long history of blending and bottling whisky and many of the big names (Chivas, Diageo, Whyte & Mackay, Dewars, Edrington) still have some kind of presence there. According to Brian Townsend, in his book Scotch Missed, historically Glasgow “was a city of many distilleries with colourful names” but the last malt distilleries closed down in the early 1900s (apart from the short-lived Kinclaith distillery, within Strathclyde Grain Distillery, which ran from 1958 to around 1975). 

The CEO of Glasgow Distillery Company Ltd, Liam Hughes, very kindly took the time to answer my questions (yep, same ones as last time - that was the plan remember?) before heading off on holiday. Here’s what he had to say;

Q. Where is your distillery located, and why in that specific location?
Glasgow Distillery is the only Single Malt Distillery in a city in Scotland and was chosen because we wanted to build a distillery on the basis of its city location and logistical practicality after visiting the Brooklyn Distillery who had done something similar. ​

Q. Why did you decide to start producing whisky? And why now?
​We were always going to make Whisky – Glasgow hasn’t had a Single Malt Distillery since 1902 so it seemed a gap that needed filling.

My quest to become better informed about all the new Scottish distilleries has begun! My plan is simple; contact all the distilleries and ask them all the same questions so I (and therefore you) can firstly, learn more about their experiences, philosophies and future plans, but also (hopefully!) explore the differences between them. ​

First up is Ardnamurchan Distillery, owned by the independent bottler Adelphi Distillery Ltd. Now  independent bottlers acquiring distilleries is nothing new; think Signatory and Edradour, G&M and Benromach and Ian MacLeod and Glengoyne/Tamdu to name a few. As far as I know though, Adelphi are the first independent bottler to build their own distillery from scratch (Although Wemyss followed suit with the Kingsbarns Distillery a few months later). 

I seem to have been writing about J & A Mitchell quite a lot recently, but since last weekend marked the 12th Anniversary of the opening (re-opening?) of Mitchell’s Glengyle distillery, I figured that warranted another post. At least it is about Kilkerran this time rather than Springbank!

At the time, it was quite a novelty - it was one of the forerunners in the wave (now practically a tsunami) of new Scottish Distilleries, and the first distillery to open in Campbeltown in well over 100 years. The original Glengyle distillery had been founded in 1872 by William Mitchell, who ran it until 1919, when it was sold. It closed its doors a few years later in 1925. Although all the distilling equipment was removed, and the stock sold off, the distillery buildings themselves remained pretty much intact over the intervening years, being used first as a rifle range, then as an agricultural depot.  

The story goes that Mr Hedley G Wright, current chairman of J & A Mitchell Co Ltd, during one of his visits to Springbank, had noticed that the buildings were for sale and commented, “Hmm, my great-great uncle used to own Glengyle. I think I should buy it.”  I may be paraphrasing slightly but you get the idea! Buy it he did (in November 2000), and the ambitious plan to create a brand new distillery within the walls of the old one began.

The first time I saw the soon to be new Glengyle distillery, in 2002, it was an empty shell. A very large empty shell!  Over the next couple of years though, I, along with all the other staff at Springbank, gradually watched the new distillery come to life under the direction of Mr Wright and Frank McHardy, who was Springbank Distillery Manager at the time. ​

The stills and mill were sourced second hand - the stills from Ben Wyvis distillery and the mill from Craigellachie - although the shape of the stills was altered somewhat to give the distillery character they wanted. The rest of the equipment was new though - the very large stainless steel mash tun was brought down by road (I’d have hated to be stuck behind that lorry on the way down to the town!) and fitted by Forsyths of Speyside. I vividly remember watching the washbacks be built on site - now that was impressive! If you’ve ever been to a cooperage and watched them building casks, it was like that but on a much, much larger scale. The noise of 5 or 6 guys hammering the huge hoops into place around the newly installed washbacks was something else! I also remember the first time the new washbacks were filled - and the water just poured out the bottom!  They do that apparently, until the giant staves absorb enough water to expand into place and make them watertight. That’ll be why they were filled with water first then, won’t it? (That’s also why wooden washbacks are kept full of water when not in use, so that they don’t dry out and start leaking).