Glenmorangie Distillery

Glen­morangie is a dis­tillery in Tain, Ross-shire, Scot­land. The dis­tillery is owned by The Glen­morangie Com­pany Ltd. Their main prod­uct is the range of Glen­morangie single malt whisky. The Glen­morangie Com­pany ceased to pro­duce blended whisky for super­mar­kets in 2009.

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).