WHISKY
Spirit of enterprise
It seems that Scotland’s distilleries are set to follow the mantra of ‘don’t move, improve’ with ambitious expansion plans afoot for some of the industry’s big players
another distillery expanding. Diageo, who own Mortlach, has announced
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that they are to expand Mortlach distillery in Dufftown. Mortlach’s spirit is highly regarded by whisky blenders and connoisseurs alike. Over the years Mortlach have only ever released a handful of offi cial bottlings but that is set to change. Along with announcing the expansion of
the distillery Diageo have also announced that they will be releasing four new expressions from Mortlach. These include two no-age state- ments called Old Rare and Special Strength along with two aged bottlings at 18 years old and 25 years old. If previous bottlings are anything to go by
these new expressions are going to be phenom- enal. For a long time, as part of the Flora and Fauna range bottled by Diageo, Mortlach 16 year- old has been highly prized but this bottling will be discontinued. So if you see a bottle of Flora and Fauna Mortlach 16 year old I would defi - nitely recommend grabbing it. Firstly, because it’s a brilliant dram but also because it could be worth quite a bit in a few years. Mortlach Distillery was the fi rst distillery
to be built in Dufftown, which is now dubbed the ‘whisky capital of the world’ by whisky enthusiasts. Diageo will be spending £18 million on the
expansion of Mortlach Distillery as part of their ongoing £1 billion investment in whisky production over fi ve years across Scotand. Not to be outdone, The Edrington Group,
who own The Macallan, has announced that it will be investing £100 million in The Macal- lan estate in order to increase capacity and construct a new visitor centre. The project has been awarded to architects
Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners who Edrington says ‘share our values and push the bounda- ries of style and quality’. The project is quite unusual. They are going to build an entirely new distillery on The Macallan estate and close the old distillery. They say that when the new distillery is operational the old one will be preserved.
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ot a week goes by at the moment without some sort of announcement about a new distillery getting built or
In 2010, The Glenlivet Distillery invested
£10 million in a major expansion project. This increased their capacity by 75% and they predict that it will not need to be extended again until at least 2100. However, there is a major difference between the two projects; The Glenlivet decided to incorporate the old distill- ery into the new one. The Glenlivet could have quite simply run
the new distillery as an entirely separate oper- ation but they had no intention in doing this and made sure the old distillery site was part of the new one. This probably means that they have had to compromise on effi ciency but have maintained the Glenlivet house style. As well as the new distillery, The Macallan
is going to build an entirely new visitor centre. Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners have been involved in some impressive projects in the past including The Millennium Dome, Termi- nal 5 at Heathrow Airport, Lloyd’s of London and the Pompidou Centre. The architectural plans for both the new
distillery and visitors centre look excellent and will incorporate Easter Elchies House, which is seen as the brand home and is very important to the history and future of the brand. The house features on the label of all The Macallan bottles. Unfortunately for The Macallan, some
whisky bloggers have spotted that images of the new distillery look a bit like the set of The Teletubbies. However, its architects have an excellent track record and I have no doubt the new distillery will be very impressive when it opens in 2017.
Below: An impression of the new expansion to the Mortlach distillery.
WORDS BLAIR BOWMAN
‘Dufftown is now dubbed the ‘whisky capital of the world’
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