Aultmore Distillery

Ault­more Dis­tillery lies sev­eral miles north of the town of Keith on the east­ern fringe of Spey­side. The dis­tillery was estab­lishedby Alexan­der Edwards and build­ing com­menced in 1895. The dis­tillery ini­tially did very well and pro­duc­tion was dou­bled in the first few years.

Ault­more is gaelic for ‘Large river’.

The area around Ault­more had been a favoured spot for illicit dis­till­ing in the early nine­teenth cen­tury. This was thanks to abun­dant springs and plen­ti­ful peat on the Fog­gie Moss and a ready mar­ket among pub­li­cans in Keith, Fochabers and Port­gor­don. The smug­glers lived on in folk mem­ory for many years; in 1934 the old­est local inhab­i­tants recalled that one of the ‘Small stills’ had been worked by one Jane Milne, near the source of Aultmore’s process water, the Burn of Auchin­der­ran, about a mile from where the dis­tillery stands today.

Pro­duc­tion began in May 1897 and Ault­more was soon so pop­u­lar on the mar­ket that exten­sive alter­ations and improve­ments were announced. Pro­duc­tion increased steadily and by July 1898 Aultmore’s capac­ity had increased to 100,000 gal­lons a year.

Elec­tric light replaced paraf­fin lamps and the distillery’s water-wheel became an out­dated source of power. It was first sup­ple­mented, then replaced, by the Aber­nethy 10 horse­power steam engine, dated 1898. The steam engine, dri­ven by a sys­tem of line shafts, worked the bar­ley and malt con­vey­ing plant, the malt dresser and mill, the mash­ing machine, the wash still rum­mager and var­i­ous pumps.

This piece of engi­neer­ing excel­lence con­tin­ued to give ser­vice for almost three-quarters of a cen­tury and is pre­served at the dis­tillery today although not in work­ing order.

Mean­while, Alexan­der Edward had bought Oban Dis­tillery and linked it with Ault­more to float a new lim­ited com­pany, The Oban and Aultmore-Glenlivet Dis­til­leries Ltd, with a share cap­i­tal of £160,000. The issue was a com­plete suc­cess and net­ted prof­its of £40,000 for the pro­mot­ers.
How­ever, the col­lapse of the impor­tant blend­ing house Pat­ti­sons Ltd, of Leith (who had an inter­est in the new busi­ness) in 1899 led to a series of busi­ness fail­ures and affected the whole of the malt whisky dis­till­ing indus­try. Oban and Aultmore’s out­put had to be cut, and the share cap­i­tal reduced to £67,650. The mar­ket was over­loaded with Spey­side malts in 1900, and Ault­more made lit­tle progress until trade revived in 1903-04.

More hard times were to come as dis­til­leries were closed dur­ing World War I to con­serve sup­plies of bar­ley and then affected by eco­nomic reces­sion in the United King­dom and Pro­hi­bi­tion in the United States. In 1923, Oban & Ault­more put its two dis­til­leries up for sale.

Ault­more was bought by John Dewar & Sons Ltd, of Perth. When Dewar amal­ga­mated with other blend­ing com­pa­nies to form an enlarged Dis­tillers Com­pany Lim­ited in 1925, Ault­more was trans­ferred to DCL’s sub­sidiary, Scot­tish Malt Dis­tillers Ltd, now part of United Dis­tillers.
The dis­tillery was closed again from 1943–45 to con­serve bar­ley sup­plies dur­ing World War II but by the early 1950’s Ault­more was dis­till­ing again. It was pio­neer­ing envi­ron­men­tally friendly recy­cling of dis­tillery efflu­ent and suc­cess­fully devel­oped a new tech­nique to pro­duce a new type of dried high-protein ani­mal feed.

In the late 1960’s a pro­gramme of improve­ment and expan­sion began at Ault­more. The two stills were con­verted to steam heat­ing in 1967, the long dis­used water-wheel was demol­ished and the steam engine went into retire­ment in 1969 on the eve of a com­plete recon­struc­tion. The dis­tillery was closed from Jan­u­ary 1970 to Feb­ru­ary 1971, when two addi­tional stills were installed and the boiler was con­verted from coal-burning to oil-firing.

In 1998, just a lit­tle over a cen­tury after it was founded, Ault­more was acquired by cur­rent own­ers Bac­ardi through their sub­sidiary John Dewar & Sons, the very same com­pany that bought the dis­tillery in 1923.

Only a very small per­cent­age of all the malt whisky that is pro­duced at Ault­more is is never bot­tled as a sin­gle malt, most of it is still makes it into the Dewar’s blends like the widely avail­able ‘White Label’.