Glenlivet Distillery

The Glen­livet Dis­tillery is a dis­tillery near Ballindal­loch in Moray, Scot­land that pro­duces sin­gle malt scotch whisky.

The Glen­livet dis­tillery is the old­est legal dis­tillery in Scot­land; it was founded in the same year that dis­till­ing was legalised by the Gov­ern­ment, and it has oper­ated almost con­tin­u­ally since. The dis­tillery remained open through­out the Great Depres­sion and it’s only clo­sure came dur­ing World War II. The Glen­livet dis­tillery has grown in the post-war period to become one of the biggest sin­gle malt dis­til­leries in order to keep up with global demand; The Glen­livet brand is the biggest sell­ing malt whisky in the United States and the third biggest sell­ing sin­gle malt brand globally.

Today, the dis­tillery is owned by the French alco­holic bev­er­ages com­pany Pernod Ricard and they over­see the dis­til­leries pro­duc­tion of 5,900,000 proof litres per annum. The major­ity of this — enough for 6 mil­lion bot­tles — is sold as The Glen­livet sin­gle malt, with the remain­der being used in Pernod Ricard’s blended whisky brands.

Pro­duc­tion

The dis­tillery draws water from Josie’s Well, a short dis­tance from the dis­tillery. Bar­ley is deliv­ered slighted peated from Greencore’s Buckie malt­ings and Glenlivet’s stills are lantern shaped with long, nar­row necks, all of which helps to pro­duces a light tast­ing spirit. The dis­tillery has 4 wash stills each with a capac­ity of 15,000 litres each and 4 spirit stills with a capac­ity of 10,000 litres.

Spirit from the dis­tillery is then matured in oak casks for­merly used to mature bour­bon (ex-bourbon), as is nor­mal through­out the indus­try, with some prod­ucts being fin­ished in casks pre­vi­ously used to store sherry and port.

Glen­livet is cat­e­gorised as a spey­side dis­tillery. The stan­dard range of prod­ucts are bot­tled at 12 Years, 15 Years and 18 Years, with a num­ber of pre­mium prod­ucts bot­tled at 21 Years and older. Glen­livet also pro­duces a range for the travel retail and duty-free shop mar­kets, which dif­fers slightly from the nor­mal range.

The main prod­uct range from the dis­tillery is The Glen­livet range of sin­gle malt scotch whisky, but whisky from the dis­tillery is also used in the pro­duc­tion of Pernod Ricard’s other brands, includ­ing the well known and pop­u­lar Chivas Regal and Royal Suite brands.

Bot­tling of The Glen­livet and asso­ci­ated blended brands takes place at Chivas Regal’s bot­tling plant at New­bridge just out­side of Edinburgh.

His­tory

Illicit dis­til­leries were com­mon­place through­out the Spey­side area from medieval times but were largely made redun­dant with the pass­ing the Excise Act, in 1823. It was under this leg­is­la­tion that legal dis­til­leries could be formed, sub­ject to hold­ing a license. George Gor­don, 5^th Duke of Gor­don, was instru­men­tal in the pass­ing of this leg­is­la­tion and his ten­ant, George Smith, who was oper­at­ing an illicit dis­tillery at the time, became the first per­son to apply for and receive a license to legally pro­duce spirit. This would prove to be an unpop­u­lar deci­sion, every other dis­tiller was oper­at­ing ille­gally at the time and hop­ing the new Excise Act would be repealed, some­thing which would not hap­pen if some dis­tillers accepted the new law. Threats were made against George Smith, so George Gor­don pro­vided Smith with two pis­tols to be used to ensure both his own safety and that of the dis­tillery. In 1824, The Glen­livit dis­tillery was estab­lished at Upper Dru­min by George and his youngest son James Gor­don Smith.

George Smith estab­lished a sec­ond dis­tillery dur­ing 1849, named the Cairngorm-Delnabo Dis­tillery but by 1855 or 1856, both dis­til­leries were run­ning at full capac­ity, and were unable to meet ris­ing demand. The oper­a­tion of two sep­a­rate sites was also prov­ing dif­fi­cult and expen­sive, so plans were formed around the same time to build a new, larger dis­tillery fur­ther down the hill at Min­more. Con­struc­tion of this new dis­tillery was under­way when the old Upper Dru­min dis­tillery was destroyed by fire dur­ing 1858. Con­struc­tion of the new Min­more dis­tillery was sped up and sal­vage­able equip­ment from the Upper Dru­min dis­tillery was trans­ferred to the new Mim­more dis­tillery. The Delnabo dis­tillery was closed at the same time and the best parts of the equip­ment were also trans­ferred to the Min­more plant. Pro­duc­tion com­menced at the new plant dur­ing 1859 and it was around the same time the legal entity of George & J.G. Smith, Ltd. was formed.

George Smith died in 1871 and his son James Gor­don Smith, inher­ited the dis­tillery. The qual­ity of the prod­uct from their dis­tillery had resulted in the other dis­til­leries in the area renam­ing their prod­ucts to ‘Glen­livet’ and by the time of George’s death, sev­eral dis­tillers were doing so. J.G. Smith decided to take legal action and tried to claim own­er­ship on The Glen­livet name, this legal action was only par­tially suc­cess­ful — the ver­dict forced other dis­tillers in the area to stop call­ing their whisky Glen­livet and gave J.G. Smith sole per­mis­sion to use the brand, but per­mit­ted other dis­til­leries to hyphen­ate their dis­tillery name with the ‘Glen­livet’ name, which resulted in new dis­tillery names such as the The Glen Moray-Glenlivet Dis­tillery, a dis­tillery which is sit­u­ated nearby.

The dis­tillery remained open through­out the Great Depres­sion, an event which affected many other dis­til­leries; it wasn’t until the Sec­ond World War that the dis­tillery was moth­balled for the first time, by Gov­ern­ment decree. In the after­math of World War Two, Britain was heav­ily indebted and needed to export large quan­ti­ties of goods to earn for­eign rev­enue (mainly United States dol­lars). Dis­till­ing was an ideal indus­try with whisky much in demand over­seas. Dis­till­ing restric­tions were rapidly lifted and out­put from the dis­tillery was at pre-war lev­els by 1947, despite ongo­ing bar­ley, fuel and man­power limitations.[1] Bread rationing was retained until 1948 in order to ensure sup­plies of grain for the distilleries.

Glen­livet Dis­tillery (George & J.G. Smith, Ltd.) merged with the Glen Grant Dis­tillery (J. & J. Grant Glen Grant, Ltd.) in 1953 to form the The Glen­livet and Glen Grant Dis­tillers, Ltd.. The com­pany would go on to merge with Hill Thom­son & Co., Ltd. and Longmorn-Glenlivet Dis­til­leries, Ltd. in 1970 before chang­ing their name to Glen­livet Dis­tillers Ltd in 1972. The com­pany was then pur­chased by Cana­dian drinks and media com­pany Sea­gram in 1977. Seagram’s alco­hol pro­duc­tion inter­ests were acquired by Pernod Ricard and Dia­geo dur­ing 2000, with own­er­ship of Glen­livet Dis­tillers pass­ing to Pernod Ricard. Glen Grant Dis­tillery was sold to Cam­pari Group in 2005.

The Glen­livet is the best sell­ing malt whisky in the United States, and the fourth best sell­ing in the UK with a 7% mar­ket share. Cur­rent global sales total 6 mil­lion bot­tles per annum.