History

The distillery was officially established in 1775, but the distillery had previously been under the control of illicit distillers, who sought to avoid paying taxes to England, since 1717. This early history has led to claims that Glenturret is the oldest distillery in Scotland, a title contested by other establishments such as Littlemill, Glenisla, Bowmore and Glen Garioch.

The distillery was originally known as “Hosh” and was originally owned by the Drummond family. “Hosh” comes from the gaelic “cois”, meaning foot. It was taken over by John McCallum in 1845 till 1875 when Thomas Stewart took it over and renamed it Glenturret in its centenary year.

The First World War saw the closure of the distillery, but following the war it reopened again under the Mitchell Brothers until 1921 when the great depression and prohibition in America saw it closed again. The buildings during this period were kept as storage by the Murrays of Ochtertyre. It did not reopen again to production till 1957 when it was revitalised by James Fairlie. Fairlie was a whisky enthusiast and his intention was to create a malt whisky created in traditional fashion and to preserve the craft of distilling. The distillery was bought by Cointreau in 1981 and from there passed to Highland Distillers in 1990. Since then it has become the home of “The Famous Grouse Experience”, which was nominated for an Interactive Entertainment Award at BAFTA in 2002.

Production and Character

The water supply for the Glenturret comes via its own pipeline from Loch Turret which has its origin in Ben Chonzie. As the water used contributes much of the taste and character of the whisky, the purity and quality of the water is essential in the whisky making process. Ben Chonzie is part of the Grampian Mountain Range and is a granitic intrusion, known as diorite. This geology has resulted in the extreme softness of the water of Loch Turret making it a suitable source for the whisky.

Barley is soaked in water from the source for two to three days then spread over the floor of the malting house. The green malt is then dried in a kiln over peat smoke. The malt is then milled into grist, which is like a course flour. Grist is then mixed with hot water in the mash tun at about 70^oC for about an hour. This is drained off and the second water, which is hotter, is added and allowed to run straight through. The third water is even hotter and is used as the first water for the next batch. The sugary wort is collected, cooled and then fermented in large pine vessels called wash backs. Yeast is added and after 48 hours of fermentation the wash is made. The wash is then pre-heated in a wash-charger and from there goes to the wash still. This is a traditional pot still made of copper and is of a shape unchanged in the history of Scotch whisky making. The wash is heated in the pot still so the alcohol vapour rises up and cools and condenses in the low wines receiver. The low wines then passes through to the spirit still where it is distilled again. The spirit running through the pot and spirit stills is subject to Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise Duty and so is kept under lock and key. It can be sampled and tested by the stillman via the spirit sample safe. The spirit from the spirit still is divided in three parts, but only the middle cut or “Heart of the Run” is suitable to be made into malt whisky. The other two parts are fed back into the low wines receiver to be re-distilled. The middle cut then goes to an oak spirit receiver and from there to the filling vats in the spirit store.

At this stage more water is added to reduce the concentration of alcohol from 75% to 64%. Each oak cask is hand made and therefore unique, so each must be weighed before and after filling to determine how much spirit is in each. Each cask is stencilled with the name, year, cask number and number of litres. The casks are then laid aside in the warehouse for a minimum of three years when it can be used for blending. But for the malt whisky range it is matured for 8, 10, 12, 15 or 21 years or longer for very special bottlings.

Philip Hills has described Glenturret with the words:- “Its nose has the floweriness which is characteristic of such [bourbon cask]; it opens up with water and yields scents of elderflower and liebfraumilch. It is entirely honest, not appearing to be anything it isn’t, but what it is, is sufficient; an entirely pleasing and agreeable whisky.”

Towser the Mouser

Towser, a long-haired tortoiseshell female, was the resident feline pest control expert at Glenturret from 1963 till 1987 was an officially recognised record breaker. Her record breaking victim count was 28,299 mice which were laid out on the Still House floor each morning to be inspected by the stillman. The auditors for the Guinness book of records observed Towser’s prowess over a number of days and her total kill count was estimated statistically. She was commemorated by a bronze statue at the visitor’s centre at Glenturret and her story was featured on Blue Peter. Her paw prints also decorate the label on a bottle of Fairlie’s light Highland Liqueur. Her successors are Dylan and Brooke who were chosen for their friendliness and photogenic looks rather than for their mousing skills.

The Royal connection has meant that the distillery has played host to a string of famous visitors, many of them British prime ministers taking an hour or so off between meetings with the monarch of the day at Balmoral.

The history of the distillery nearly ran a very different course. The first licensed Lochnagar distillery was established in 1826, on the north side of the river by a former illicit distiller. Soon after fellow smugglers burnt it down — apparently nonplussed that one of their own was ‘going legit’. It was later rebuilt in 1845 by Begg on the south bank of the river; he renamed it New Lochnagar. The north-bank distillery closed by 1860 and Lochnagar continued to prosper — although the Abergeldie Estates refused to sell the distillery the grounds it occupied, seeing the value increase as the distillery flourished and expanded.

The distillery is now owned by Diageo Scotland Ltd, one of the largest spirit producing companies in the world. Royal Lochnagar is one of the smallest distilleries in The Classic Malts Selection™, and has been rebuilt three times. However, it still retains the traditional distillery appearance — with its two pagoda kiln heads – and techniques (including an open mash tun) and also has a visitor centre and a ‘learning centre’ for the appreciation of malt whisky.

Glenmorangie is categorised as a highland distillery and boasts the tallest stills in Scotland. Glenmorangie is available in Original, 18 and 25 year old bottlings, special cask bottlings, cask finishes, extra matured bottlings and a range of special edition bottlings.

History

Legend tells that alcoholic beverages of one kind or another were produced at the site of the Glenmorangie distillery since the Middle Ages.

According to official accounts, the production of alcohol started at the site of the distillery in 1738, when a brewery was built at Morangie Farm. The water source for the brewery was shared with the farm. William Matheson purchased a licence to produce whisky in 1843, to turn the brewery into a distillery, he purchased two second hand gin stills. The distillery took the Morangie name from the farm and the name Glenmorangie was created as a brand.

The distillery was purchased by its main customer, Macdonald and Muir during 1918. The Macdonald family would retain control of the company for almost 90 years.

Glenmorangie, like all distilleries and breweries in Britain suffered terribly between 1920 and 1950, with prohibition and then the Great Depression in the United States having a large impact on sales. The distillery was effectively mothballed between 1931 and 1936. The depression ended with World War II , but the war effort left fuel and barley in short supply and the distillery was again mothballed between 1941 and 1944. Exports of whisky were important during the war, but enemy action disrupted and destroyed deliveries to the United States and Canada.

Towards the end of the war and in the immediate post war period, the distillery increased production and was running at full capacity by 1948. The distillery increased the number of stills, from 2 to 4, during 1977. Water supply became a concern during the 1980s with development of the land around the Tarlogie Springs becoming more likely. This development could have impacted on the quality and quantity of water available to the distillery, so the decision was made by the distillery to purchase around 600 acres (2.4 km2) of land around and including the Tarlogie Springs to guarantee the quality and quantity of water necessary. The distillery once again engaged in expansion during 1990 when it added a further 4 stills, and 2 additional fermentation vessels (or washbacks) were added during 2002. Four new stills were added in 2009, bringing the total to twelve.

The Macdonald family retained ownership of 52% of the company through a complicated London stock exchange listing which saw the family hold the majority of the voting shares of the company. The Macdonald family sold the company in 2004 for around £300 million to a joint venture comprising of the French drinks company Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton and Guinness France Holdings SA, the French subsidiary of British drinks company Diageo, with Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy holding 66% of the company’s shares and Diageo holding the remaining 34% of the shares.

Glenmorangie has been the best selling single malt in the UK for a number of years, and produces around 10 million bottles per annum, of which 6 to 6.5 million are sold in the UK. Globally, Glenmorangie has a 6% share of the single malt market.

Production

Glenmorangie’s water source is the Tarlogie Springs, situated in the Tarlogie Hills above the distillery. Barley grain is supplied by Highland Grain Ltd, a co-operative of farmers in the area. The stills used, the tallest in Scotland at 26 ft 3 in (8.0 m) tall, with 10 feet 1.25 inches (3.080 m) necks, are claimed by the company to produce an extremely light taste. The distillation process is undertaken by a staff of 16, known as The Sixteen Men of Tain, who work year round, with the exceptions of Christmas and periods of maintenance.
Casks maturing at The Glenmorangie Distillery

Glenmorangie uses a number of different cask types, with all products being matured in white oak casks which are manufactured from trees growing in Glenmorangie’s own forest in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri, United States. These new casks are left to air for 2 years before being leased to distillers Jack Daniel’s and Heaven Hill for them to mature bourbon in for 4 years. Glenmorangie then uses their barrels to mature their spirit. The Original range will mature entirely in ex-bourbon casks, while the Extra Matured range of bottlings are transferred into casks that were previously used to mature other products such as wine, port or sherry in a process called finishing. These form part of the regular range of products Glenmorangie produce. Glenmorangie also obtains small batches of other casks for finishing and release limited edition bottlings from these, in the past, the distillery is rumoured to have obtained casks used to mature Château Margaux.

The warehouses in which the casks are stored are also believed to affect the taste of the whisky. Glenmorangie have released a special edition bottling, titled Cellar 13 which is from the warehouse closest to the sea, as the whisky is believed to have a distinctive flavour.

Bottling of the Glenmorangie and Ardbeg brands takes place at the The Glenmorangie Company’s combined headquarters and bottling plant at Broxburn, West Lothian, just outside Edinburgh, Scotland. Glenmorangie also bottled Drambuie at the site in a joint venture with the Drambuie Company, but this arrangement will end in 2010.

Pronunciation

The name of the whisky is often mispronounced /ˌglɛnmɔˈrændʒi/ “Glen-Mor-Angie”. The correct pronunciation is /glɛnˈmɔrəndʒi/ “Glen-Morrun-Jee” (rhymes with orangey).

Although it might be a very new distillery they are following old traditions in an ancient landscape, one title they can claim is that they are the most westerly distillery in Scotland. Abhainn Dearg is trying to bring back the knowledge garnered by those ‘quiet’ distillers whose knowledge has been passed down through the generations and produce a whisky the island can be proud of.

At Abhainn Dearg the intent is to launch a single malt that will be on sale at the National MOD in 2011!  This is well under way and casks have been set aside, but for those who prefer not to wait so long a ‘New Spirit’ will be available.

With the support of Crofter’s in Uig, it’s hoped that in the future they will produce enough barley for for their needs.  Already ten acres have been sown and early signs are very promising. Barley was grown on the islands many years ago, along with hemp and flax.

Abhainn Dearg wants to be able to produce a Single Malt from land to bottle a goal they are passionate about. This will impact on the amount of whisky they can produce, but challenging the ‘big boys’ isn’t their intent. Their aim lies in quality and producing a superior Single Malt that will put the islands, the Outer Hebrides, firmly back on the Whisky map of Scotland.

The business is run on environmentally friendly lines, with a small hydroelectric scheme planned.

The distillery will produce 10,000 litres this year, and up to 25,000 litres by 2009–2010.

He has based his distillery on an illicit still working on the islands until the 1950s, using copper stills and American oak bourbon barrels.

The distillery was built in the 1825 by, and was acquired by Distillers Company Limited in 1925. The distillery closed in 1983, although supplies of the malt are still available. The distillery houses a malting which continues to supply all Islay distilleries, as per an agreement signed in 1987. Due to the closing of the distillery, Port Ellen whisky is becoming more and more collectible.

Port Ellen is reputed to have been the first distillery to have incorporated Septimus Fox’s spirit safe design into the distillation process. Its innovations did not stop there, however. After having been taken over by the shrewd and energetic John Ramsay in 1836, Port Ellen became the first distillery to trade with North America in 1848. Ramsay secured the right to export in larger casks and store the casks in bonded warehouses prior to export, a system which persists to this day.

Ramsay was a busy man, it would seem. As well as helping Robert Stein and Aeneas Coffey develop their continuous stills at his distillery, he was also instrumental in the establishment of the Islay to Glasgow steamboat service, imported Sherry and Madeira into Glasgow, was at one time the Liberal MP for Stirling and served as the chairman of the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce.

After John Ramsay’s death Port Ellen stayed in the hands of his family, but they sold their interest in the 1920s and it was acquired by DCL in 1925. DCL closed the distillery in 1929, but it continued to operate a maltings and bonded warehouses until it was re-opened with two more stills in 1966–67. In 1973 a large drum maltings was built that continues to supply malt to all the distilleries on Islay to this day.

Port Ellen was closed in the slump of 1983, but the whisky made in the 17 or so years between its re-opening and final closure has acquired a reputation as some of the finest to have been made on Islay in that time. Following two outstandingly successful Rare Malt bottlings in 1998 and 2000, Diageo has released an official bottling of Port Ellen every year since 2001, although it is presently unknown how many more of these bottlings will be forthcoming as stocks get lower. There have also been myriad independent bottlings, particularly from Signatory and Douglas Laing.

Prices for Port Ellen have increased steadily over the last decade as the reputation of the distillery grows and supplies dwindle. The first official bottling from Diageo, released in 2001, has more than trebled in price to around £350 at the time of writing, while older independent bottlings can now fetch prices up to £500-£600.

Port Ellen is a versatile malt, with considerable differences of style evident between different bottlings. Some sherry-casked Port Ellen can be beautifully rich, spicy, sweet and leathery; bourbon and refill casks often show a more austere, peppery medium-weighted style. Common characteristics, though, are a high level of peatiness and, in the best examples, a phenomenal complexity which Islay fans adore. For these reasons Port Ellen has become one of the most sought-after of the lost distilleries by collectors, investors and aficionados.

McCarthy’s Oregon Single Malt Whiskey is of the Islay tradition of Scotch whisky. Of well-known single malts from Scotland, it resembles the Lagavulin whisky. It is very peat-y. Made from peat-malted barley brought in from Scotland, their whiskey would be a single malt Scotch if Oregon were Scotland. Widmer Brothers ferments the peat-malted barley into a “wash” or unhopped beer. Using the unfinished wash allows them to get all the flavor and character of the malt when they distill. They distill in Holstein pot stills using one pass distillation, but make a small “heads” cut and a fairly large “tails” cut and put about 4 liters of tails into the next still run. The proof at time of distillation is about 150 (75%). Then they reduce in proof and barrel-age the rough distillate in old sherry casks. All the Oregon Single Malt now spends some time in barrels made from air-dried Oregon Oak. The present bottling is only 3 years old but we think it is remarkably smooth for such a young whiskey. The result is a smooth, peat-y whiskey with a surprisingly clean finish. Production is very limited because what we put in the barrel doesn’t come out for years.

McCarthy’s Oregon Single Malt Whiskey received attention from its early days in the 1990’s because American Single Malt was a novelty. In 2000, Gary Regan and Mardee Haidin Ragen noted in the Malt Advocate (March, 2000, p. 24) that in the world of American whiskey.

McCarthy’s started to receive significant acclaim in 2004, when Jim Murray’s Whiskey Bible gave McCarthy’s its Best Small Batch Whiskey in the world award and a score of 94. That same year Michael Jackson put McCarthy’s in his list of The Ten Best American Whiskeys, published in both the Men’s Journal (December 2004) and The Malt Advocate ( First Quarter 2005). In his 2006 edition of The Whiskey Bible, Jim Murray wrote, “McCarthy’s has earned a place among the world’s elite whiskeys.” His 2008 edition of The Whiskey Bible gave McCarthy’s a phenomenal score of 96.

The whiskey is made from a unique four-barley fermented wash that consists of carbon filtered Rocky Mountain water and western barley that is grown in the Northern Rockies. The wash is distilled in a Vendome Copper custom-made pot/still and then aged in 52.8 gallon heavily charred, American white oak whiskey barrels for a minimum of two years. 10 barrels are combined to make each batch.

Stranahan’s is named after minority owner, educator and activist George Stranahan, who also owns the Flying Dog Brewery formerly of Denver, currently located in Maryland.

The distillery uses only the finest Irish barley and has its own spring water source coming from the Sliabh na Gloch river high up in the Cooley mountains.

The distillery produces Kilbeggan and Lockes whiskeys, as well as Connemara single malt, Ireland’s only peated whiskey, Tyrconnell single malt and Greenore, Ireland’s oldest single grain whiskey. Other products include Michael Collins single malt, and a Michael Collins blended version.

What makes Cooley’s whiskey distillery distinctive is their use of small copper pot stills with very large necks. These cause the spirits to take 50 percent longer to pass through, and the distillers believe that the result is a more refined product. In addition, many Cooley brand whiskeys are distilled only twice as opposed to the more common Irish method of distilling the spirits three times. This gives Cooley’s products much more flavor than most Irish whiskeys. The whiskeys are matured in the 200 year old granite warehouses of Kilbeggan Distillery located in County Westmeath, some 60 miles away.

Products

• Tyrconnell
• Greenore (single grain)
• Kilbeggan (blended)
• Locke’s (blended)
• Millar’s (blended)
• Connemara (peated)
• Inishowen (peated)

History

In 1966, John Power & Son, John Jameson & Son and the Cork Distillers company (which owned the Old Midleton distillery) mergered to form the Irish Distillers Group. The board of the newly formed company decided to close their existing distilleries and consolidate all production at a new facility. This was built at Midleton as it was the only existing site with room for expansion. In July 1975, production ended at the old distillery and began in the new one. The old distillery has since been turned into a visitors’ centre.

Production

Midleton is one of the most modern distilleries in the world, and with a production capacity of 19 million litres per annum is the largest in Ireland. The distillery boasts thirteen 75,000 litre stills, both pot and column, which are used in combinations of three to produce different types of whiskey.

Whiskeys Produced

As a result of the different stills combinations that can be achieved, a range of different products can be produced.The most significant brands produced are:

• Jameson — The best selling Irish whiskey in the world
• Jameson 12yr Old, Gold, 18yr Old, Rarest Vintage Reserve and Distillery Reserve
• Powers
• Paddy
• Redbreast
• Midleton Very Rare

The grain whiskey for use in Bushmills is also produced here.