Abhainn Dearg
Ailsa Bay
Annandale
Barra
Blackwood
Daftmill
Falkirk
Glengyle
Huntley
Kilchoman
Kininvie
Ladybank
Lindores
Loch Ewe
Mellerstain
Octomore
Parkmore
Roseisle
Stal Thorabhaig

ABHAINN DEARG

The Abhainn Dearg distillery (pronounced as Aveen Jarræk, a.k.a. Red River distillery) was founded by Mark Tayburn and hopes to produce its first spirit in 2009. It's the most Westerly of all distilleries in Scotland and is located in Uig, on the west coast of the Hebridean Isle of Lewis. Abhainn Dearg distillery aims to produce 'a true Outer Hebridean Whisky'. If all goes according to plan their first single malt will be launched at the Royal National Mod in Stornoway in 2011 - a Gaelic festival that's also known as the "Whisky Olympics". For the first time in history participants should be able to enjoy a Single Malt distilled and bottled on the Isle of Lewis. (Please note that the owners made sure to avoid the word 'whisky' in their announcement, because the spirit won't have matured long enough to legally be called whisky...) According to their website: "There will always be limited amounts of Abhainn Dearg, the aim is to produce a quality Single Malt for those who take the trouble to visit our shores, support us via the Internet and, like the Shoeburn Distillery before us, supply local demand." (You can find the location of Abhainn Dearg on the interactive map of Scotland.)
 

AILSA BAY

William Grant & Sons have kept fairly quiet about their new malt whisky distillery in Girvan; Ailsa Bay.
The construction work started in early 2007 and they were already distilling malt whisky in September 2007. Unless I'm even worse at math than my highschool teacher told me, that means that setting up the entire plant took them less than a year! And the rest of the project seems to be moving swimmingly as well; Master Blender David Stewart informed me that the first fillings into wood were in early October 2007. The Ailsa Bay distillery has four wash and four spirit stills. They use stainless steel fermenters and the stills are based on the design of the stills at Balvenie. William Grant & Sons built the new distillery because of '... the requirement generally for more malt, especially for our William Grants blend and this is where most of the stock will be used in the future. We are looking for a Speyside style malt from this Distillery similar in character to Balvenie.' So, it's entirely possible that the malt whisky distilled at Ailsa Bay won't ever be bottled like a single malt - just like their Kininvie malt whisky. Oh, wait... I may have to change that last statement in a few months time. Stay tuned for more... (You can find the location of Ailsa Bay on the interactive map of Scotland.)
 

ANNANDALE

Annandale distillery in, erm... Annandale (Dumfries & Galloway) features in Alfred Barnard's 19th century book about the distilleries of Scotland. He wrote about Annan, the capital of Annandale: 'It stands on the high road from Dumfries to Carlisle, is a royal burgh, and one of the cleanest and pleasantest towns we have seen in the Lowlands.' Annandale closed in 1919, but now, after almost a century, the closed Lowlands distillery is heading for a revival. Planning permission has been granted and Annandale has received a £150,000 grant from the UK government. David Thomson, the new owner of the derelict distillery buildings, said: "Our ambition is to create an interesting and meaningful brand around Annandale, to create a whisky drinking experience around the main parameters of single malt Scotch whisky flavour and to create an engaging visitor experience."

That's all the interesting news I could gather so far - no news on actual building developments...
More information on: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/south_of_scotland/7375075.stm.
 

BLACKWOOD

There has been a lot of buzz about the new Blackwood distillery on the Shetland islands - but there are no 'buzzing' stills yet.
The distillery that would have been the first on the shetlands was to be located near South Nesting, somewhere between Laxo and Lerwick. Some of the people involved around 2003 were Caroline Whitfield (founder and CEO) and John McDougall (master distiller). If it ever gets completed, Blackwood will be by far Scotland's northernmost distillery, but it seems that the ambitious plans that were revealed in November 2002 may have been just a tad too optimistic in hindsight. They had planned to start the actual building work on the distillery in the spring of 2003, but as far as I know they've only gotten as far as renting an office near the planned location in May 2004. They were awaiting final planning permission for a long time - but when they DID receive it, no building was done.

For a few years things were silent around Blackwood, even though (unlike most other 'upstarts'), Blackwood already had a brand on the shelves. I don't know if they actually produced the stuff themselves (yet), but there have been Blackwood gins and vodkas on shelves in the UK for some time now. They even have a wodka cream liqueur called 'Jago'. However, in May 2008 Blackwood was in the news again - but not in a good way... Several directors and staff members left Blackwood, annual accounts were several months overdue and there were some rumours about fraud. According to my sources, the company had failed to become profitable until then, so the future of Blackwood looks grim indeed - especially because most of the business was sold to Blavod vodka.

(More information on www.shetlandwhisky.com or www.blackwooddistillers.com)
 

DAFTMILL

Daftmill has been operating relatively 'under the radar' since I first heard of them in 2004.
They didn't make the 'noise' that distilleries like Blackwood and Ladybank did, but while those two project seem to have dwindled away into oblivion, Daftmill has been quietly plugging along and building stocks. When I noticed that an update on the status of Daftmill was long overdue in the Spring of 2008, Charlie MacLean and Francis Cuthbert were happy to fill me in.

Daftmill (in the Eastern Highlands - although some consider this to be a Lowland distillery) is owned by Francis and Ian Cuthbert who financed the relatively small operation themselves. The name of the mill (and now the distillery) comes from the 'Daft Burn', which earned its daft name because it appears to flow uphill. The family of brothers Ian and Francis Cuthbert (who also own a gravel quarry nearby) has been farming the lands in the area for six generations now - and they plan to use their own barley for their whisky.
The Daftmill distillery is a converted meal mill (apparently built in 1809) that uses un-peated malt, two stainless steel washbacks,
one 2,500 liter wash still and one 1,500 liter spirit still; both fired indirectly. The maximum production capacity of the Daftmill distillery is a mere 20,000 liters of alcohol per year, so they're even smaller than their Lowland cousin Bladnoch. The conversion from meal mill to distillery took place between 2003 and 2005. With the exception of building the stills and mash tun (those were made by Forsyth's of Rothes), all the work to convert the mill to a distillery was done by men who lived within a five mile radius of Daftmill Farm.

In May 2008, Francis informed me about the progress on Daftmill;
 
Hi Johannes, General progress has probably been slower than I would have liked. We certainly have not been running as much as I would have hoped to. But the fact we have to earn a living reduces the time available for distilling however the less we produce the more exclusive our product will be.

Our fist spirit was laid down in December 2005 so it will be a few months yet before it is legal whisky.
We will not be rushing it to the market though as you say others such as Arran and perhaps Drumiuish have done them selves no favours by marketing immature whisky. I would imagine we will wait till perhaps 5-8 yo before bottling but I would hope to be able to wait until we feel it is ready. Most of our casks are fresh bourbon barrels from Heaven Hill distillery but due to a shortage of casks the last batch was from Jack Daniels instead. We have also filled a few fresh sherry butts. We had originally planned to use a proportion of refill casks but sourcing really good quality refill casks has been difficult as most distillers want to retain their best wood.
 
All the best
 
Francis

The address is Daftmill Farm, Cupar, Fife (telephone 01337 810 732) and visits can be made by special arrangement.
You can find more information on www.daftmill.com.
 

GLENGYLE / KILKERRAN

The first 'Glengyle' distillery was built in 1872 or 1873 by William Mitchell. He built Glengyle after a quarrel with his brother John prompted him to leave Springbank. The Campbeltown distillery operated for half a century, until it was finally closed in 1925. Finally? Well, apparently not, because around the start of the new millennium Springbank (still owned by the Mitchell family) announced its plans to rebuild Glengyle on the original site. The production buildings at Glengyle were pretty much restored by the end of 2002.

During the first half of 2003 the buildings were fitted with a mash tun, stills and a spent grains removal system (among other things) by the main contractor, Forsyth's of Rothes. The mash tun arrived in April 2003 and according to Distillery Manager Frank McHardy the wooden washbacks (built by Arthur Brown of Dufftown) were in place by September 2003. The rest of the necessary equipment (mill, dresser, dust extractor, cooling tower, pipework, condensers, milling system,  electric supply, pumps & valves, etc.) was installed just a few months later and Glengyle was officially opened by Winnifred Ewing and Hedley Wright on March 25, 2004.
The first 'whisky' (Kilkerran) wasn't bottled until 2007 - and it will probably be a while before it's widely available.

Check out the full Glengyle distillery profile for more information...
 

HUNTLEY

Here's a scoop - Watch Malt Maniacs #110 for an interview with Duncan Taylor's Euan Shand - the driving force behind the new Huntley distillery in, erm... Huntley. Perhaps they should re-think that name? ;-)

More information will be added here after the interview...
Probably quite some time after the interview, actually ;-)
 

KILCHOMAN

Kilchoman was the first new distillery to be built on Islay for well over a century.
The driving force behind Kilchoman is Anthony Wills and he dreams of building the smallest and most traditional distillery in Scotland, or at least on Islay. Kilchoman will be one of the few distilleries that will be able to claim that every step of the production process is carried out on site. Barley (Optic and Chalice) will be grown at Rockside Farm and malted on Kilchoman's malt floor. The spirit will be produced, matured and bottled on site and everything produced at the distillery will be bottled as single malt whisky. The whisky won't be chill filtered or coloured and will be reduced to a standard bottling strength of 50% using Islay water.

Scotland's potentially most traditional distillery made a bit of an an odd start.
Instead of employing the traditional distillery cat they went for a distillery pig - Lucy. Well, Anthony seems confident in Lucy's pest control abilities ;-) During the summer of 2004 the traditional farm buildings at Rockside Farm (near Machir Bay) were being converted into a visitor centre and the first distillery buildings. Two stainless steel washbacks arived in February 2005 and the stills (a 2,000 liter spirit still with a long narrow neck and a 3,000 liter wash still) were installed in February 2005. They are directly heated. The first spirit was scheduled to flow on June 2, 2005 during the Islay festival but they didn't make that date. Anthony DID manage to give some of the maniacs a tour of the facilities though - and Olivier's passionate arguments against industrial yeast may have helped convince Anthony to avoid those. You can read all about our adventures at Kilchoman in entry #240 in my Liquid Log.
The first Kilchoman spirit finally flowed from the stills in November 2005.

Kilchoman will initially be in production for 28 weeks of the year.
Fresh bourbon and refill barrels form the base of the maturation programme, but other casks (sherry, port, rum and wine) may be used as well. Well, that's a break with 'tradition' I could certainly live with... The first mature Kilchoman whisky is still a few years away, but fortunately for visitors to Islay the visitor centre is already finished. It tells the story of farm distilling on Islay in the 18th and 19th century from its illicit beginnings to legislation. The shop sells a range of Kilchoman merchandise including miniature bottles of Kilchoman 'New Spirit' as well as a range of fresh and smoked venison and beef from the Islay Fine Food Co.
The café serves fabulous home made soups - I recall some especially fine pumpkin or potato soup...

For more information, contact Anthony Willis;
Kilchoman Distillery Co Ltd
Rockside Farm, Bruichladdich
Isle of Islay PA49 7UT
www.kilchomandistillery.com
 

KININVIE

OK, I'll admit Kininvie is an 'active' distillery - it has been since 1990.
Still, for a long time I couldn't list it with the other active distilleries or write a distillery profile about it...
Why? Well, it seems like the owners of the distillery (WM Grant & Sons) were focussing their marketing efforts on their two main malt brands; Glenfiddich and Balvenie. They needed the Kininvie malt whisky primarily for their Grant's blends, but they were not overly eager to invest heavily in a third malt whisky brand. That's probably why there hasn't been an official bottling of Kininvie for many years. In fact, WM Grant & Sons have been actively trying to prevent any 'Kininvie' single malt from ever reaching the shelves of malt mongers around the world. I've been told adding minute quantities of malt whisky from another distillery to every cask they sell to blenders or bottlers has been standard practice at WM Grant & Sons for decades.

I've heard they were quite cross when the German company Glenscoma released an 'Aldunie' whisky a while ago.
The back label claimed it was a vatting of Kininvie single malt with just a few drops of 'another Dufftown single malt'. Obviously, that would be Balvenie or Glenfiddich. Van Wees in Holland also had a 'Burn of Speyside' bottling with a similar story not too long ago. The addition of whisky from another distillery instantly turns the contents of the cask into a vatted malt whisky, preventing the contents of the 'polluted' cask to be sold as a Balvenie, Glenfiddich or Kininvie single malt. Even though that particular Glenscoma I mentioned wasn't even bottled as a single malt, the WM Grant people went beserk over it. Since it was standard practice to transform all single malt whisky that's distilled at Kininvie into a vatted malt as soon as possible, the malt maniacs collectively decided Kininvie wasn't a proper single malt distillery yet - more like a vatted malt whisky distillery, actually.

However, things changed in 2006 when they released their first (?) official single malt bottling.
You can find my notes below; I'll write a full profile and add Kininvie to the distillery overview shortly...

Kininvie 15yo 1990/2006 'Hazelwood 105' (52.5%, OB, First fill sherry cask, Bottled August 1 2006) - from Ho-cheng.
Needless to say, this is something very special - if I'm not mistaken the very first official bottling of Kininvie ever.
Nose: Light & malty. Not too expressive, but clearly very well made. Perhaps a tad too sweet for some, but I like it.
It remains light in character, but over time some heavier and more herbal notes appear (without growing 'piney').
Sweetened oatmeal? Faint spices hop in and out of the picture. Very subtle fruits and flowery aroma's. Whiff of plastic.
Actually, this grows nicer and nicer as you give it more time. Even some excellent organics emerge after half an hour.
Hey, in the end I even got a whiff of something medicinal. You have to work at this one, but it's rewarding.
Taste: Smooth and sweet. Although it comes from a sherry cask it feels a bit like a bourbon. Not a lot of wood notes.
Some development over time on the palate - some fruity notes join the party; the sherry comes to the surface now.
Score: 84 points - I had it at 83 for a very long time, but with the nose still going strong after half an hour it hopped to 84.
 

LADYBANK

James Thomson (formerly of Scotchwhisky.com - which is now owned by Sukhinder Singh) was closely involved with the Ladybank project in the past - but I'm not sure if that's still the case because the blog on the website hasn't been updated since 2006. The whole project has been set up as a club; members can invest in the distillery (located in the 'Kingdom of Fife') and reserve their own stock. Here's a quote from the site; 'The Club intends, by focusing on very small production quantities, to create one of the world's greatest single malt whiskies. By reducing yields so that we can always improve quality, and by distributing our whisky only to members and special guests who visit the distillery, Ladybank will add a new dimension to the world of Scotch Malt Whisky production.'

Yeah, well... It seems the club didn't quite reach their goal yet.
The latest press release on their website dates from 2005, so that doesn't bode well...

(More info on www.whisky.co.uk/intro.html)
 

LOCH EWE

Just like with the new Huntley distillery and the interview with Euan Shand, you'll have to wait for the next issue of Malt Maniacs.
It contains a distillery profile for the Loch Ewe micro-distillery and an interview with John Clotworthy by Nico Meijboom.
 

ROSEISLE

A bit of a weird name, if you ask me - but then again I'm not Gaelic...
And actually, it might not be the final name anyway - it's just the location (in Speyside, between Forres and Elgin) where industry giant Diageo plans to build a brand new distillery. And why not? They only have 27 at the moment if I'm not mistaken... ;-)

Diageo already operates a large maltings facility in Roseisle. When I write this (May 2008) Diageo is still waiting for planning consent, but they hope to begin actual construction later this year and open the distillery as early as 2009. Roseisle will be the first new large Scotch malt whisky distillery to be built since Allt-a-Bhainne (1975), Auchroisk (1974) and Braeval / Braes of Glenlivet (1974).
 

OTHER DISTILLERY PROJECTS...

Latest update: July 2009 - I haven't included all the Scotch whisky projects that are in development in this list; some of the beautiful dreamscapes painted by enthusiastic entrepreneurs and borderline embezzlers are just a tad too 'imaginary' at this point. Take the Mellerstain distillery in the 'borders' region, for example. According to some vague reports in 2007 production was supposed to start in 2008, but that was the last we've heard of it. So, this list isn't exhaustive - I've tried to include only fairly 'solid' information. I've received some information from the other malt maniacs about Barra, Falkirk, Lindores, Parkmore and Stal Thorabhaig, but couldn't verify allthe data, so they're not on this list yet. Octomore distillery (connected to Bruichladdich) seems more solid, but since Bruichladdich also released a heavily peated 'bastard' malt (well, technically) from their own stills under that name (the first 'futures' were bottled in May 2008) I'll take a conservative stance on that; maybe a separate profile will be warranted later.

Quite a few of these are probably just 'pipe dreams'. They - and others - will be added to this page once I've received 'solid' information. Do you know of any information that should be added? Drop me a note... 

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