Glentauchers

A member of the ‘1890s gang’, the Glentauchers distillery was established near the town of Keith at the top of the Spey region in 1898. The owner was James Buchanan who needed a distillery to provide source whisky for his blended whiskies (Buchanan’s and Black & White). During those early times it was also used to experiment with new processes such as continuous pot distillation with 100% malted barley – the practice that is used by every Scottish distillery today. In 1925 the distillery became part of the United Distillers group (later Diageo) and operated unaltered until 1966 when the distillery was able to increase their production significantly by adding four new and larger stills to the original pair. Due to a longer fermentation period, the resulting distillate is significantly lighter and more floral which makes Glentauchers a highly sought after malt for blending – with the most notable being Ballantine’s. The annual output from the distillery is 4.1 million litres of raw spirit with extremely rare official single malt bottlings and only a small number of independent bottlings.