Glen Elgin Whisky
Distillery
As many as a hundred malt whisky distilleries have been born
in the green glens of Speyside, many of them, like Glen Elgin,
in the boom years just before 1900.
But even as the new chimney stacks rose, trouble was brewing
in the whisky industry. Glen Elgin’s designer, the renowned
Elgin architect Charles Doig, made an apocalyptic prediction,
that this would be the last distillery built on Speyside for
fifty years. Even this turned out to be conservative; it was
actually 60 years before Tormore became the next.
At least, in Glen Elgin, the last was saved
for best. And, in fact, little has changed in a hundred
years.
In the circumstances, that itself is a miracle. Work on
the buildings began shortly before the 1898-99 collapse
of Leith whisky blender, Pattisons, famously drove a buoyant
market for malt whisky into recession. Local legend has
it that many of the workers went unpaid and that the steeplejacks
only got their money when they threatened to demolish the
chimney stack. Glen Elgin’s next act was to impoverish
its creators, who were forced to sell it for perhaps a quarter
of its cost within a year of its eventually beginning production
in May 1900.
Speyside’s newest distillery changed hands once more
in 1902 and again in 1906, when it at last began a stable
period of almost 25 years in the hands of Glasgow blender
John J. Blanche. In the 1930s, it became part of Scottish
Malt Distillers, for whom it was an important component
of the well-known White
Horse blend.
Innovations were rare during Glen Elgin’s first half
century though one is of interest – the site had partly
been chosen for its ability to make use of abundant water
supplies from the Glen Burn to drive a turbine that provided
most of the power needed to run the machinery. As a result,
electricity from the national supply was not needed until
1950. The early 1960s brought much needed investment and four
new stills were finally added to the original two. Glen Elgin™
became available as a single malt and exports of a 12 year-old
expression, mainly to Italy and Japan, began in 1977.
Site Operations Manager: Colin Greig
Contact
Us
Glen Elgin Distillery
Longmorn Elgin Moray
IV30 3SL Scotland
Tel: +44 (0) 1343 862 100
The Glen Elgin Whisky Distillery is not open to the public.
Courtesy of Glen Elgin Distillery |
Glen
Elgin Distillery is situated 10 miles south of where the river
Lossie exits to the sea and about 40 miles east of Inverness.
Founded at the end of the whisky boom in 1898, it 
Food suggestion: Glen Elgin™ goes well with salschichon
– an Iberian slicing sausage.
