Glasgow Distillery: The Whisky That Broke a 113 Year Drought

Glasgow went without a working distillery for over a century. The city that once had at least half a dozen licensed operations lost its last one in 1902, and for the next 113 years anyone wanting a whisky actually distilled inside the city boundary was out of luck. The Glasgow Distillery Company changed that in 2015, and we currently hold a genuine cask from it, in stock and available now rather than sold through or theoretical, which is not something we can say about every distillery in this series.

Glasgow Distillery at a glance

History of Glasgow Distillery

Glasgow had licensed distilleries as far back as 1770, and at various points the city supported several of them, but the last one shut its doors in 1902 and the city went dry, in the distilling sense, for the entire twentieth century. Liam Hughes and Mike Hayward set out to fix that, forming the Glasgow Distillery Company in 2012 and installing their first still, a modest 500 litre pot nicknamed Annie, in 2014. A proper distilling setup followed in 2015 with two larger stills, Tara and Mhairi, at a site in Hillington on the city's south-western edge, close to the M8. Demand grew quickly enough that a second pair of stills, Frances and Margaret, went in during 2019, named after Frances and Margaret MacDonald, the Glasgow Style artists whose work sits alongside Charles Rennie Mackintosh's in the city's design history.

The distillery's name and its flagship single malt, 1770, are a direct nod to that earlier, long-closed Glasgow distillery, treating the intervening century as an interruption rather than an ending. The company also makes Makar gin, a spiced rum, and Malt Riot, a blended malt named after the 1725 riots that broke out across the west of Scotland when a new tax on malted barley pushed the price of everyday ale beyond what ordinary drinkers could afford. It is a distillery that leans into local history rather than inventing a generic Highland backstory for a whisky made on the edge of an industrial estate, which is honestly more interesting than most invented heritage stories in this business.

How Glasgow Distillery makes its whisky

Water comes from Loch Katrine, the same source that has supplied Glasgow's drinking water since Victorian times, and the distillery produces genuinely three distinct styles from the same site: an unpeated single malt, a peated version, and a triple-distilled expression, which is unusual for a Scotch malt distillery and gives the range more internal variety than most single-site operations manage. Most Scotch single malt is distilled twice; running a batch a third time through the stills strips out more of the heavier, oilier compounds and tends to produce a lighter, cleaner spirit, a style more usually associated with Irish whiskey or with Lowland distilleries such as Auchentoshan, and it is a genuine point of difference for a young distillery to offer alongside its standard two-times-distilled malt.

First releases under the 1770 name reached the market in 2018, once stock from the earliest fillings had matured long enough to bottle, and the distillery marked its first cask reaching full maturity, a full decade after that first fill, in 2025. A dedicated laboratory on site lets the team experiment with new make spirit and different wood types in a way that a distillery built purely for volume rarely bothers with, and that experimental streak shows up in the range of finishes the 1770 single malt has been released under since.

Glasgow Distillery and The Single Cask

We hold a genuine Glasgow (Peated) cask, reference 18/470, distilled 2 May 2018 and matured in a virgin oak barrel to a cask strength of 61.5%. It is currently in stock, not sold through, with 242 bottles in the original outturn. Tasting notes run bold and smoky: barbecue char, bonfire and bacon fat on the nose alongside beeswax, menthol and bitter coffee, with black pepper, mocha, charred barrel and dark cocoa on the palate, building to a long, mineral, savoury finish. Virgin oak is an assertive choice of wood, and six years has been enough time for it to leave a real mark on the spirit without swamping the peat underneath.

Glasgow Distillery and independent bottlers

As a young, independently owned distillery that sells much of its own stock directly under the 1770 name, Glasgow Distillery has a smaller independent bottling footprint than an old, established Speyside or Highland name, simply because it has not been running long enough to build up decades of casks changing hands. What does exist tends to come from smaller, specialist independent bottlers rather than the large houses, and cask strength single-cask releases like ours are a genuine way to see the spirit in a rawer form than the official range, which is more commonly bottled at standard strength.

Plan a bottling inspired by Glasgow Distillery

If you want a genuinely available Lowland cask with a strong story attached, our own Glasgow (Peated) cask 18/470 is in stock now rather than a future possibility, which puts this guide in a different position to several others in this series. If you are after a broader Lowland or urban-distillery style to build a range around, our Girvan guide covers a very different, much larger Lowland operation for contrast.

For an independent bottler or a new brand working from a wider brief, we can talk through independent bottling and private label whisky built around stock that actually fits, walk through the four steps from cask to bottle, and hold everything in our own bonded warehouse while a plan comes together. If you are earlier in the process and thinking about buying a whisky cask generally, our guide to cask sizes and types is a sensible next stop. A cask is not a regulated investment, values can move in either direction over however many years it spends maturing, and nothing here is financial advice, only a straightforward account of what we see buying and selling casks day to day.

Get in touch and tell us what you are trying to build. We will give you a straight answer about what is realistically available and what it is likely to cost.

Glasgow Distillery FAQs

Is Glasgow Distillery the first distillery in Glasgow?

No, but it is the first in well over a century. Glasgow had licensed distilleries going back to at least 1770, with the last of them closing in 1902. Glasgow Distillery Company, founded in 2012 with production starting in 2014 to 2015, was the first to operate inside the city since then.

What does 1770 mean on a Glasgow Distillery bottle?

It refers to the founding date of an earlier, long-closed Glasgow distillery, which the modern company's flagship single malt is named after as a deliberate link to that history rather than a claim that the current distillery itself dates from 1770.

Is Glasgow Distillery whisky peated?

The distillery makes three distinct styles from the same site: unpeated, peated and triple-distilled single malt, so both peated and unpeated versions genuinely exist rather than one being a one-off special release.

Can you buy a cask of Glasgow Distillery whisky?

Yes. We currently hold a genuine Glasgow (Peated) cask, distilled 2018, matured in virgin oak, cask strength 61.5%, with bottles in stock now. Contact us for current availability.

What is Malt Riot?

Malt Riot is a blended malt from Glasgow Distillery Company named after the 1725 riots that broke out in the west of Scotland over a new tax on malted barley, which pushed up the price of ale for ordinary drinkers at the time.