Glenallachie distillery

GlenAllachie distillery stands in Speyside near Aberlour at the foot of Ben Rinnes. Founded in 1967, it once produced whisky mainly for blends. In 2017 the distillery was bought by Billy Walker, Trisha Savage and Graham Stevenson. They formed The GlenAllachie Distillers Company and relaunched it as a maker of fruity single malts. The site includes ponds fed by the Lour burn which provide cooling water. A £600,000 upgrade of the visitor centre was completed in 2023. The distillery draws water from streams on the north-east slopes of Ben Rinnes. Although it can produce four million litres of alcohol, current output is about half a million litres. Fermentation lasts 160 hours, longer than many distilleries. The still house contains two lantern-shaped wash stills and two onion-shaped spirit stills. Horizontal condensers allow temperature control without pumps. More than fifty thousand casks are stored in sixteen on-site warehouses, some dating to the 1970s. Visitors walk through the distillery to see the semi-lauter mash tun and six stainless steel washbacks. The still room’s lantern and onion stills stand out against the whitewashed walls. Water from the Lour burn feeds the ponds and cools the condensers by gravity. The warehouses hold casks that once filled blends and now mature single malts. The rebranding introduced the slogan ‘whisky in good hands’ and a new Wood Collection of limited editions. Ben Rinnes towers above the site, its streams feeding both the burn and the distillery.