Glenallachie distillery


Glenallachie is a malt whisky distillery on Speyside at Aberlour founded in 1967. It has mainly produced whisky for blends. Under Chivas ownership it released 2 official bottlings at cask strength, one of 16 and one of 18 years old. A new core range of 10, 12, 18 and 25 year old whisky was released in 2018 under the new ownership, as well as additional single cask releases.

History

The GlenAllachie distillery was built in 1967 by Mackinlay McPherson.
It was bought and mothballed by Invergordon Distillers in 1985. They sold it to Campbell Distillers in 1989, who restarted the distillery.
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.

Building

The building of the GlenAllachie distillery was designed by S. Lothian Barclay from Lothian, Barclay Jarvis & Boys and William Delme-Evans It is located at the foot of Ben Rinnes, close to the Lour burn. The grounds has ponds that are fed by the Lour, that provide water for cooling.

Production

The distillery draws its water from spring fed and snow water fed streams on Ben Rinnes. It uses lightly peated malts. 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. The distilled spirit is matured in used oak bourbon barrels. Though the malt is mainly used in blends, it produces a 16-year-old cask-strength bottling since 2005, and an 18-year-old bottling since 2008. It is mainly used in the Chivas Brothers Cask Strength Clan Campbell blend, and also in the Legendary and White Heather blended whiskies. The whisky is bottled and sold as a twelve-year-old single malt by Delhaize, and Signatory bottles vintage editions of the whisky.