Benromach Distillery

Benromach Distillery

A plaque in the stillroom at Benromach Distillery commemorates its official opening by Prince Charles in 1998. Or perhaps that should read its reopening: for Benromach Distillery actually began production exactly a hundred years earlier in 1898.

Benromach's Stills All in One Stillroom & Production Area Visitor Centre Interior Cask Filling Area Bonded Warehouse

But in the mid 1980s Benromach was closed by its then owners United Distillers and most of the equipment was removed. In 1993 the distillery was purchased by Gordon & MacPhail, the Elgin-based whisky merchants and bottlers. Over the following five years they effectively rebuilt the distillery within the shell of the original buildings, and re-equipped it from scratch.

Benromach Distillery is located just north of the A96 Forres bypass, and is well signposted from it. The distillery's main distinguishing feature is the dark red free-standing brick chimney, originally installed to vent the long gone coal-fired stills. These days it serves as an additional signpost to those visiting the distillery: and to pilots from nearby RAF Kinloss.

It's tempting to suggest it would serve even better with the name of the distillery painted down its length, much as the names of many Islay distilleries can be read from miles out to sea.

Visitor Centre

Royal Opening

Today's Benromach was designed very much with visitors in mind. There's ample car parking on the south side of the distillery and an attractive visitor centre is housed in the old drier house at the front of the complex. From here you proceed into the smallest working distillery on Speyside, operated by a production team of just two.

The milling operation you see first belies the small scale of production. But a better picture emerges from the stillroom. Only this is rather more than a stillroom. A single large production floor houses the wash and spirit stills on one side, and four washbacks on the other.

Through a large opening and effectively in the same room are a modern mashtun and a wash charger. It's not often that you can see so many of the major processes involved in distilling from one vantage point.

The tour also gives access to the bonded warehouse with, in pride of place, Cask 1998 No.1, signed by the Prince of Wales as part of the opening ceremony.

Scotch whisky must by law be matured in oak casks for a minimum of three years to be called Scotch whisky. But most single malts are matured for much longer. As a result, most Benromach available until recently came from the stocks acquired with the distillery and dating back to before its closure in the 1980s.

When Benromach reopened, the original plan was to bottle the first of the "new" Benromach as a ten year old in 2008. But the real beauty of such a small operation is its flexibility. When it was realised that the new Benromach was turning into an excellent Scotch at a remarkably young age the plans were changed to allow some of the new Benromach to be bottled early.

The result is Benromach Traditional. This comes in distinctive packaging designed to appeal to a wider market. Extremely attractive, its styling owes more to new world wineries than Speyside distilleries.

But even the staunchest single malt traditionalists should not let this deter them from trying what is certainly the youngest single malt we have ever tasted. It really is exceptionally good.

You can find out more about Making Malt Whisky from our series of feature pages showing the stages in the process.