Glenglassaugh Distillery

The Glen­glas­saugh Dis­tillery is a 133 year old whisky dis­tillery located in a pic­turesque site just out­side the Spey­side region in North­east Scot­land, close to the small town of Port­soy, Banff­shire some 54 miles North­west of Aberdeen. The Dis­tillery was estab­lished in 1875 by The Glen­glas­saugh Dis­tillery Com­pany Ltd as the global demand for Scotch Malt Whisky was boom­ing. The site was orig­i­nally cho­sen due to its prox­im­ity to a clean and pure water sup­ply of the high­est qual­ity (Glas­saugh Springs) and easy access to the nearby bar­ley fields. In the 1890’s the com­pany was sold to High­land Dis­tillers and until 2008 has been owned by them. High­land Dis­tillers are a sub­sidiary of The Edring­ton Group.

Dur­ing the 20^th cen­tury the Glen­glas­saugh Dis­tillery has seen sev­eral peri­ods of oper­a­tion inter­spersed with silent moth­balled peri­ods. In 1960 it was rebuilt and upgraded to dou­ble the pro­duc­tion capac­ity and to yield lighter spirit. How­ever in 1986 when the whole whisky indus­try was review­ing oper­a­tions the eco­nom­ics of run­ning this rel­a­tively small and remote dis­tillery per­suaded the own­ers that they should stop pro­duc­tion and the dis­tillery has stayed silent since then. The whisky from this dis­tillery had tra­di­tion­ally been used in the pro­duc­tion of renowned blended whiskies such as Cutty Sark, Laing’s, and The Famous Grouse. It is thought that along­side the new whisky pro­duc­tion, the dis­tillery refur­bish­ment may also include the devel­op­ment of Glenglassaugh’s first vis­i­tor centre.