Balvenie

In 1886, after working for the Mortlach distillery for twenty years, William Grant left his bookkeeping job and bought a field near Balvenie Castle. He drew up plans for his distillery (Glenfiddich) and the foundation stone was laid in the autumn of 1886. Once construction was completed in 1887 Glenfiddich started producing single malts (most Scotch at the time was blends) and once the venture proved profitable and popular, Grant turned the distillery over to his nine children and went looking for a new project. In early 1892 work began to convert an 18th-century mansion, Balvenie New House, into a distillery. The Balvenie Distillery took fifteen months to complete, and on 1 May 1893, the first distillation took place. During construction Grant had to save a bit on the equipment so he purchased used stills from the Lagavulin distillery. The Balvenie distillery underwent a complete renovation in 1971, increasing their stills from 4 to 9 (5 wash stills and four spirit stills) which may account for why Balvenie did not have an official distillery bottling until 1973. Today it has a big range of core distillery expressions. David Stewart MBE, who is Balvenie's Malt Master, is one of the industry's most experienced experts and began working with William Grant & Sons in 1962.