Distilleries

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...

Girvan Distillery: The Grain Giant That Started From a Grudge

Girvan does not look like most distilleries in this series, and it does not run like one either. There is no pot still, no visitor centre built around a single malt story, and no single building mo...

Coleburn Distillery: The Speyside Ghost That's Coming Back

Most of the closed distilleries in this series stay closed. Coleburn is the exception worth watching. It shut in 1985, had its distilling licence formally revoked in 1992, and spent the following t...

Scapa Distillery: Orkney's Other Whisky, Now With Something to Say

Orkney has two distilleries, and everyone has heard of the other one. Scapa sits half a mile down the coast from Highland Park, on the shore of the great natural harbour that gives it its name, and...

Royal Lochnagar Distillery: Whisky From Queen Victoria's Back Garden

Royal Lochnagar is easy to overlook simply because of where it sits. The distillery is tucked into the hillside above the River Dee, less than a mile from Balmoral Castle, and for most of its life ...

Invergordon Distillery: The Highland Grain Giant Behind Whyte & Mackay

Most of the distilleries on this blog make single malt you can buy by the bottle in a shop. Invergordon does not really work that way. It is the biggest grain distillery in the Highlands, tucked be...

Imperial Distillery: The Ghost Distillery Beneath Dalmunach

Most whisky drinkers have never heard of Imperial, and there is a simple reason for that: the distillery has not made a drop since 1998, and the buildings themselves were pulled down in 2013. Yet I...

Pulteney Distillery: Scotland's Maritime Malt from the Far North Coast

Wick is not on the way to anywhere. It sits at the far northeastern corner of the Scottish mainland, closer to Norway than to Edinburgh in spirit if not quite in miles, and Pulteney distillery has ...

Tullibardine Distillery: Built on a Brewery, Reborn as a Single Malt

Blackford is not a name most whisky drinkers would place on a map, but the village has been making alcohol in one form or another for over six centuries, long before Tullibardine ever distilled a d...

Tamnavulin Distillery: From Blending Workhorse to Wine Cask Specialist

Most Speyside distilleries built in the 1960s were designed to do one thing: make clean, reliable spirit for someone else's blend. Tamnavulin was built for exactly that reason, and for the best par...