Glen Mhor whisky

1920 was the year for John Birnie, the Glen Mhor Company took over Glen Albyn Distillery and for years the two neighbouring distilleries worked together. In 1954 Glen Mhor caused revolution to be the first distillery to make use of the Saladin Box malting process. In 1972, William Birnie, the 80 years old son of John Birnie sold Glen Mhor and Glen Albyn to DCL. Sources have it DCL seized to use Saladin box malting in 1980 due to high costs and malting was done elsewhere. In 1983, whisky's darkest year, DCL decided to close Glen Mhor. Small output at relative high costs and a possible need for renovation in a down market sealed the faith of this distillery. After 3 years of decay the building were ripped apart to make way for a shopping mall. Just what we needed…

Glen Mhor today

History of Glen Mhor seems to be quite dull most of the times. The acquisition of Glen Albyn and the Saladin box being the two outstanding events of its history. These days we can make things a little bit more exciting. I strongly suggest you do a H2H between Glen Mhor and Glen Albyn. Diageo has an excellent Glen Mhor 22yo 1979/2001 and an evenly excellent Glen Albyn 26yo 1975/2002 in their Rare Malts range. Try to track them down and plunge yourself in some Merkinch District history.

Glen Mhor Technical data

Water Source:  Loch Ness (distilling and cooling water for condensers)
Malting: Saladin box (installed 1954, operated until 1980)
Peat Source:  Dava Moor
Wash still:  1 (converted to steam heating in 1963)
Spirit stills:  1 (converted to steam heating in 1963)

Michel van Meersbergen
 

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From the Glen Albyn Distillery Profile; submitted by Michel van Meersbergen;

Also of modern style was the behaviour of distillery manager John Birnie in 1892. He had a keen eye for the potential of the distillery he helped to built and in his view it was only fair to receive a good share in the company. Mister Gregory and his Company laughed in his face and in a rage of rancour Birnie left to start his own distillery. During the Great War Glen Albyn was requisitioned by the Admiralty and used for the construction of anti-submarine nets. If that was not enough, in 1917 when the Americans had uneasy excuses in the form of the 1915 torpedoing of Steam Ship Lusitania by the Germans and the Russian Revolution to come to the Old Land, Glean Albyn was converted for making sea mines. It's my guess the perfect infrastructure: canal, harbour and railroad made it a perfect spot for this explosive conversion. The US occupation lasted until 1919. Already in 1920 'disaster' struck again. Former manager John Birnie now cooperated with James Mackinlay and better known as the Glen Mhor Distillery took over Glen Albyn…

For years the two distilleries worked together in perfect harmony until 1954. Neighbouring Glen Mhor was the first to use Saladin box malting in Scotland and few years later it was introduced at Glen Albyn. Next big event was the selling of Glen Albyn and Glen Mhor by William Birnie, the 80 years old son of John Birnie sold Glen Mhor and Glen Albyn to DCL. DCL seized to use Saladin box malting in 1980 due to high costs and malting was done elsewhere. In 1983 it was decided to close Glen Albyn. A high costing, small output of a not much needed malt by blenders to which Glen Albyn delivered draw the curtains. In 1986 things got worse, the remaining buildings got demolished to make way for a shopping center. As written before, history never travels far, on the site a shop from the Comet chain sold the latest and innovative household appliances, when they moved several years later the food-chain Co-op took over. Selling amongst countless other items: Cereals and whisky...

1) There is now a Co-op store where the Glen Mhor distillery used to be.

2) In 1954 Glen Mhor was the very first malt whisky distillery to use the Saladin Box malting process.
This process was abandoned in 1980, probably due to the relatively high costs.

3) In 1972, William Birnie (the son of John Birnie, then 80 years old) sold Glen Mhor and Glen Albyn to DCL.

4) More trivia about Glen Mhor will be added later.
 

Glen Mhor 22yo 1979/2001 (61%, UDRM, 70cl)
Nose: Very spicy. Deep, dry sherry elements. Banana. Great complexity. Some liquorice. Sherry.
Taste: Very hot and powerful at C/S. Sour and woody. Not really drinkable. Becomes grittier with some water.
Score: 80 points - barely recommendable, which is a little bit below par for a UD Rare Malts bottling.

Glen Mhor 20yo 1977/1998 (43%, Signatory Vintage, 70cl)
Nose: Starts off rather strange & sweet - not your typical Speysider. Smoky too. And of course the liquorice.
Taste: Assorted sweets and liquorice. Menthol. There was also something 'fishy' (literally) in the taste.
Score: 71 points - not really an encouragement to hunt down more bottles from this obscure distillery.

Glen Mhor 12yo (40%, G&M, bottled early 1990's, 70cl)
Nose: Rich and malty, then fruitier. Spices? A distant hint of rancid butter? Not very 'pronounced'.
Taste: Smooth & a little bittler in the start. Malty, sweeter center. Long, hot finish. Not a lot of individuality.
Score: 76 points - A faily old bottling from the days that I had just discovered single malt whiskies.

Glen Mhor 8yo (70 Proof, G&M, Bottled 1970's)
Nose: Coffee and mocca. A hint of oil. Not a lot of other elements that stand out.
Taste: Flat and tired at first, but it improves after a while. It grows chewy and a tad winey.
Score: 80 points - a surprising score for a malt this age (both young and old at the same time...)

Glen Mhor 8yo (100 Proof, G&M, Bottled 1970's)
Nose: Organics. Sweet and sherried. Mash tun. More character than the 70 Proof variety.
Taste: Sherried, woody and quite dry. A tad bitter in the finish but still a better dram than the '70 Proof'.
Score: 83 points - even better than the '70 proof' version; an exceptional look into the past.
 

These were not all the (official and independent) expressions of Glen Mhor whisky I've tried over the years.
My Track Record used to contain a complete overview of all the single malts I've tried, but when I passed the 2000 malts mark (and the complete whisky list wouldn't fit on two separate HTML pages anymore) I gave up. My Liquid Log still contains my tasting notes on most single malts I've sampled and scored, though. You can find a specific expression through the search box at the top of each distillery profile. The mAlmanac now contains (purely personal) selections of some of the best single malts and the worst whiskies I've tried so far - as well as the ones with the highest 'Bang-For-Your-Buck' value. But those tasting notes and scores only reflect my own, purely personal opinions.

On Serge's distillery profile on Whiskyfun you can find another perspective on the whisky made at this distillery.
Check out the Malt Maniacs Monitor on Malt Maniacs for my scores on all expressions I've tried so far - and those of almost all the other certified malt maniacs as well. The Malt Maniacs Matrix contains a few thousand single malts that were sampled and scored by at least four different malt maniacs, so you can compare our individual opinions.
 
 

The history of Glen Mhor is closely linked to that of the nearby
Glen Albyn distillery, also located in Inverness. It was founded
in 1892 by Mackinlay & Birnie; the first whisky was produced
in december 1894. Glen Mhor was acquired by the DCL in 1972
and licensed to SMD, together with Glen Albyn.
 
Glen Mhor operated for less than a century. The distillery was
closed in 1983 and demolished in 1988. The third distillery in
Inverness, Millburn, was closed in the 1980's as well. Official
bottlings of Glen Mhor were never released - unless you count
the UD Rare Malts expression depicted below. Apart from that
28yo version from 1976 the only other UDRM bottling (as far
as I know) has been a 22yo version from 1979. However, in
the 1990's semi-official bottlings were relatively easy to come
by; Gordon & MacPhail released quite a few different versions.
These days, Glen Mhor has disappeared from the marketplace.

I'm afraid there's not much more to tell about Glen Mhor.
Well, let me re-phrase that - there's not much more I can tell you about Glen Mhor...
Fortunately, fellow malt maniac Michel van Meersbergen wrote a more extensive distillery profile for our Malt Maniacs e-zine with some more background information about it...

Glen Mhor Distillery Profile by Michel van Meersbergen, Holland

Glen Mhor (pronounced Glen Vawr, meaning Great Glen…) was initiated in 1892 by John Birnie and James Mackinlay of Charles Mackinlay & Co, the blenders from Leith. Birnie had left the Glen Albyn distillery two years earlier after a dispute about shares in the distillery.
 
Next to Glen Albyn, he and Mackinlay started the Glen Mhor distillery and were distilling from 1894 onwards. Little is known about the equipment but there's no doubt in my mind Birnie constructed his distillery to the same technical advanced standards as he did with Glen Albyn.
 
In 1906 the cooperation was made legal by forming a limited company.
John Birnie, unlike he did at Glen Albyn, had to swallow his pride now, the Mackinlay Company became the biggest share holder.