Hazelburn distillery

Hazelburn distillery was a Campbeltown single malt Scotch whisky distillery in Campbeltown, Argyll and Bute. It stood beside Campbeltown Loch in the south-west corner of the Kintyre peninsula. The site had been used for distilling since 1825, when the Reid family opened Rieclachan distillery. By the 1870s it belonged to the Greenlees brothers, who also ran Lorne Highland Whisky and owned Dalaruan and Lagavulin. In 1881 the business became Greenlees and Colvill, and Captain Samuel Greenlees took control of the Moy estate the same year. The distillery was the largest in Campbeltown by 1886. That year it employed twenty-two people and turned out 192,000 gallons of whisky. On 9 September 1893 Princess Helen of Waldeck and Pyrmont visited on the royal yacht Victoria and Albert and toured the site with Samuel Greenlees. Greenlees & Colvill Ltd went into liquidation in 1921 and the distillery was sold to Mitchell & Co. It closed in 1925 and was demolished the following year. Mitchell & Co. already owned Springbank Distillery and two other sites. Today the name lives on through Hazelburn Single Malt, which Springbank Distillery has bottled since 2005. The old distillery buildings are gone, but the lochside setting remains. Visitors to Springbank can still taste Hazelburn whisky and walk the same Campbeltown streets where the Greenlees family once worked. The narrow lanes and stone-built warehouses preserve the town’s whisky past. A short stroll from the harbour brings the loch and the hills of Kintyre into view.