NO SHORTAGE OF DISTILLERIES IN SCOTLAND

NEW DISTILLERIES ON THE ANVIL

Plenty of distilleries are lining up to cash in on the Whisky Boom, mainly Single Malts. This post is best read along with its predecessor, published in 2017. Some of these are: 

Annandale The Annandale distillery was closed in 1924, but production resumed in 2014.

Arbikie Arbikie is a large estate near Dundee. In 2014 they decided to build their own distillery.

Ardnamurchan Distillery

Ardnamurchan The bottler Adelphi called itself a distillery long before they actually built one.

Ardnahoe  a wholly Stewart Laing family-owned business Hunter Laing & Co. Ltd. at Islay. First runs of distillation began in October 2018 with Cask number 001 filled on the 9th November that year.

Ballindalloch Ballindalloch is one of Scotland’s smallest distilleries.

Daftmill The Daftmill micro-distillery has chosen not to release any of its whisky just yet.

DALMUNACH DISTILLERY

Dalmunach Pernod Ricard / Chivas built the Dalmunach distillery in 2015 - and it’s beautiful.

Dornoch Dornoch distillery is a crowd funded project near the Dornoch Castle hotel.

Eden Mill The Eden Mill whisky distillery was established in 2014 - but it’s also a brewery.

Falkirk Development by Falkirk Distillery Company happens where Rosebank used to be.

Glasgow The Glasgow Distillery Company hardly seems like a ‘proper’ distillery right now.

GlenWyvis GlenWyvis says they will be the world’s first community owned distillery - eventually.

Harris The new Harris distillery on the Isle of Harris is also located on the Isle of Lewis.

Kingsbarns The Kingsbarns distillery started producing whisky in January 2015.

Loch Ewe Loch Ewe is kind of a ‘model’ distillery / tourist attraction. Whisky was never bottled.

The gigantic Roseisle Distillery, currently producing 10m litres per annum

Roseisle The massive Roseisle distillery was founded in 2009 and began test production that year. It was officially inaugurated in 2010.

Strathearn The Strathearn micro-distillery was producing malt whisky by the end of 2013.

Torabhaig The construction of Torabhaig on the Isle of Skye started in 2014 - and is unfinished.

MORE ABOUT ROSEISLE DISTILLERY

ROSEISLE HISTORY

SPEYSIDE SINGLE MALT SCOTCH WHISKY

INTRODUCTION

Any distillery can make more than one style of whisky – and many do. Diageo’s Roseisle however was, with Grant’s Ailsa Bay, part of a new wave which has been specifically designed to produce a range of different characters of spirit.

Roseisle is a distillery of Speyside single malt Scotch whisky, in Roseisle, near Elgin, Morayshire, in the Strathspey region of Scotland. It is the first new major distillery to be built in Scotland for 30 years and is the first malt whisky distillery to generate significant renewable energy from its bio co-products. The distillery is owned by multinational drinks company Diageo. The distillery opened in 2010 and is the largest-ever built at 3,000 sq m and a cost of £40million. 

HISTORY

Roseisle was mired in controversy even before the first sod was cut to start construction. The largest distiller building a large distillery signalled some doom-mongers to predict that parent firm Diageo would use Roseisle’s opening as an excuse to close down some of its smaller sites. It soon became the equivalent of a whisky Death Star.

In reality its size, at 10m litres per annum, was smaller than Glenfiddich, and its construction was merely the first stage in a £1bn investment by Diageo in increasing capacity across its estate. Rather than closing anything down, Roseisle ushered in a new era of distillery building.

A biomass plant means it generates much of its own energy, while a heat recovery system allows waste heat from the distillery to help run the maltings at nearby Burghead and across the road at Roseisle.

PROFILE

Six of its seven pairs of stills can switch between stainless steel or standard (copper) shell and tube condensers. If a light grassy spirit is required, long fermentation (in excess of 90 hours) is used, along with slow distillation with air rests, and condensing in the copper condensers. Conversely, if a heavy style is needed then the stainless steel condensers will be used. The lack of extended copper ‘conversation’ will add the requisite weight to the spirit. A nutty (malty) style could also be produced by shortening mashing and fermentation regimes. The grassy style which is currently produced is different noticeably to that from other Diageo sites such as Glen Ord or Royal Lochnagar.  

Innovating with Bioenergy in Scotch Whisky

Diageo, a world's leading premium drinks is focussing on putting the principles of sustainability and responsibility into practice as key to its growth; from domestic value creation to addressing the carbon emissions challenges within its operations. Diageo aims to manage climate change mitigation as part of its overall risk management process, including a company-wide reduction plan which is reported against every quarter.

Diageo’s new Roseisle Scotch whisky distillery in Speyside is setting new standards for environmentally sustainable Scotch whisky distilleries. The company invested £17m in a state of the art bioenergy plant at Roseisle which uses by-products from the distilling process as a feed source of renewable energy for the plant.

Roseisle is the first malt whisky distillery to generate significant renewable energy from its co-products making its environmental impact significantly lower than a distillery of an equivalent size. Overall 50% of the distillery’s energy consumption is made up from renewable sources generated in the onsite bioenergy plant.

Roseisle utilises a combination environmental technologies that is unprecedented in distilling, such as biomass boilers to raise steam from the spent grains, and waste water treatment by anaerobic digestion and membrane filtration.

Recent results from the Roseisle distillery are:

Approximately 10,000 tonnes of CO2 per annum is being saved from the use of renewable fuels.

3,000 tonnes of CO2 saved from off-setting fuel at the malting plant.

Over 50% of the distillery’s energy is produced from sustainable renewable sources.

Water consumption has been minimised by introducing a closed loop on the distillery condensers.

Environmental impact from effluent discharge is now lower than existing outflow before the distillery was built – Roseisle Distillery can therefore be said to have virtually no environmental impact to the discharge waters.

Renewable energy is generated by the anaerobic digestion of distillery by-products.

Roseisle is the first malt whisky distillery to generate renewable energy from all the co-products and has proven the technology for implementation at other sites