Glenallachie distillery

GlenAllachie distillery

The grounds of the GlenAllachie distillery
Region: Speyside
Location	Aberlour 57.45518°N 3.22871°W / 57.45518; -3.22871
Owner	The GlenAllachie Distillers Co Limited
Founded	1967
Founder	Mackinlay McPherson
Architect	W. Delme Evans
Status	Open
Water source	Sources on Ben Rinnes
No. of stills	2 wash stills 2 spirit stills
Capacity	4,000,000 litres of pure alcohol per year
Website	www.theglenallachie.com

GlenAllachie distillery is a Speyside, single malt whisky distillery at Aberlour founded in 1967, which sits at the foot of Ben Rinnes.

Previously, the distillery produced whisky mainly for blends; it has, however, since been relaunched as a distillery known for its fruity, single malt expressions. In July 2017, it was announced that Chivas Brothers agreed to sell GlenAllachie to former BenRiach MD Billy Walker, Trisha Savage and ex-Inver House Distillers MD Graham Stevenson, who came together to form The GlenAllachie Distillers Company. It is now one of Scotland's few independently owned and managed distilleries.

History

The GlenAllachie distillery was built in 1967 by Mackinlay McPherson.^[1] It was bought and mothballed by Invergordon Distillers in 1985.^[2] They sold it to Campbell Distillers in 1989, who restarted the distillery.^[1][3] In 2017, the distillery was sold to Billy Walker, Graham Stevenson and Trisha Savage, who came together as The GlenAllachie Distillers Company Limited, along with two blended Scotch whisky brands - White Heather and MacNair's.^[4] In 2024, the distillery carried out a rebranding. This gave the bottlings a new look and limited special bottlings were henceforth summarised under the name "Wood Collection". The rebranding also introduced the slogan "whisky in good hands".^[5]

Building

The building of the GlenAllachie distillery was designed by S. Lothian Barclay from Lothian, Barclay Jarvis & Boys and William Delme-Evans^[2] It is located at the foot of Ben Rinnes,^[1] close to the Lour burn.^[6] The grounds has ponds that are fed by the Lour, that provide water for cooling.^[6] In June 2023, the distillery completed the £600,000 upgrade of the visitor centre.^[7]

Production

The distillery draws its water from spring fed and snow water fed streams on the North East of Ben Rinnes. Although the distillery has the capacity to produce 4 million litres of alcohol (LOA), they have reduced their production to just 500,000 LOA and extended their fermentation time to 160 hours. The distillery uses a semi-lauter mash tun, and six stainless steel washbacks. It uses two lantern shaped wash stills, and two onion shaped spirit stills for distillation.^[3] As the distillery was designed to be gravity fed, it has horizontal condensers which makes it easier to alter or maintain the temperature. In their 16 on-site warehouses there are currently over 50,000 casks, some of which date back to the 1970s.

References

1. Helen Arthur (2002) [1997]. The single malt companion (in Dutch). Lisbeth Machielsen (trans.). Libero. p. 118. ISBN 90-5764-236-0.
2. "Glenallachie Single Malt Scotch Whisky". whisky.com.
3. "Glenallachie distillery profile". Malt Madness.
4. "The GlenAllachie Distillery". Theglenallachie.com. 13 September 2021. Retrieved 15 April 2022.
5. "Neues Design: Glenallachie zukünftig in neuer Optik • CaptainScotch.de". CaptainScotch.de (in German). 20 February 2024. Retrieved 20 February 2024.
6. "Glenallachie". Whisky Classified.
7. "Glenallachie modernisiert Besucherzentrum • CaptainScotch.de". CaptainScotch.de (in German). 28 June 2023. Retrieved 28 June 2023.

External links

• Official Homepage