If you’ve spent any time in the Scottish Highlands, you might find a lot that looks familiar as you pull into the Glendronach car park. Stone buildings, including the old malting barn, are arranged horseshoe-like around a courtyard. Pagoda roofs cap some structures. The stillhouse is enclosed behind giant windows. They’re just standard design elements for a Highlands distillery built nearly two centuries ago and, like many, expanded and updated in the 1960s.
But beyond that initial impression of the buildings, there’s very little that can be called standard at this historic destination.
What’s perhaps most striking isn’t necessarily the biggest or shiniest thing. It’s subtle. It’s the cottage on a hill overlooking the distillery, and it places you squarely in a centuries-ago state of mind. Built in 1771 and known as Boynesmill House, the cottage was the home of James Allardice, who founded Glendronach in 1826 on the site of a mill-equipped farm. Modest though it may appear, it features a Georgian-style wing that pronounces the landowning family’s wealth. That luxurious air made it an ideal foundation for the recent renovation. It will open as a guest house next year when the distillery turns 200.
“Glendronach” is Gaelic for “valley of brambles” and the jammy sweetness implied in that name is a defining characteristic of the malt. Since March 2017, the distillery has been under the stewardship of Rachel Barrie, the celebrated, highly awarded master blender, who also oversees sister distilleries Benriach and Glenglassaugh. The dark, robust berry notes she and her team ensure are largely the doings of the sherry casks, but even before the casks work their magic, the brambles that dot the property seem to permeate the spirit, as if by some twist of Highland sorcery.
On a recent visit, Stewart Buchanan, global brand ambassador for Glendronach and the sister brands, walked me through the distillery, pointing out the Viking-calibre rake and plough mash tun, one of just over a dozen in Scotland with a copper-dome top. There’s a glinting copper underback beneath. (“The boys polish it every day,” he says.) The piece of old-world technology, which ensures proper drainage, stores the wort before transferring it to the washbacks.
“I love walking up these steps. You can smell the jammy notes — they’re there in the new make. I think it’s the still shape — it’s a catalyst for that fruit,” he says as we make our way into the still room. “Look at the first distillation — the wash stills have rounded shoulders. It’s the reflux and the way that spirit falls and rises in the body that’s producing beautiful autumn berry fruits — blackberry, bramble, red berries.” He points out the saxophone shape of the neck. “It brings the heavier notes over. That lyne arm gets you the spicier notes — tobacco, earthiness, almost sandalwood spices. It protects the always fundamental rich barley note, the robust character that will harmonise with the cask flavour.”
“Harmony” and “synergy” between the new make and sherry casks are terms that are tossed around with abandon when insiders talk about Glendronach. And indeed, sherry casks are a defining aspect, or what Barrie calls “the lifeblood”, of the brand. Their use can be traced back to the earliest days of the distillery, when Allardice presumably enjoyed the wine. Now there up to 50,000 sherry butts ageing any given day, with about 85 per cent of the malt in first-fill sherry.
The distillery stays faithful to its sherry-fanatical roots in its core expressions of 12, 15, and 18 Years Olds. But the malts have undergone a bit of an evolution, not least because the wood policy is more rigorous than ever before. Current owner Brown-Forman has made a huge investment in sherry casks.
“Before, it was very rustic and there was a lot of batch-to-batch variation, whereas now it’s more consistent. And more polished. It’s like how I’ve got a vintage motorbike and I like to polish and fine-tune it and get it to a beautiful, stunning quality,” says Barrie. “There are a few attributes that have to ring true in every expression: the integration of facets of flavour and that sherry crescendo. It’s more complex and balanced than it’s ever been.”
Barrie says Glendronach buys more Pedro Ximénez casks than any other Scotch distillery. The sweet richness from those casks boosts the berry notes of the malt, whereas oloroso casks can have a drying effect. “For me, it’s the most exquisite finesse — a rich, sweet, indulgent splendour,” she says.
In 2016, Brown-Forman bought Glendronach, Glenglassaugh and Benriach, the trio of distilleries that sit in triangular formation, an average of 35 miles away from each other, in the northern Highlands. The company became just the latest in a succession of owners, each of which left an important legacy on the brand — some more eccentric than the rest. When James Allardice officially started producing spirit on his Boynesmill estate distillery in 1826, it had only been three years since the Duke of Gordon helped push a measure legalising whisky production through Parliament. The duke had been trying to stamp out illegal distilling, which was so rampant that some say excise agents were confiscating up to 10,000 illicit stills each month.
When the act was passed, Allardice, a friend of the duke’s, got to work — and play. He could often be found socialising with the nobleman’s friends at court in London. (“He was maybe drinking more whisky than he was selling,” Buchanan says.) He was what you might call an “ideas guy”, and he pioneered the commercialisation of single-malt whisky.
You could also say he had an impish disposition. An incident he’s better known for involved two of Edinburgh’s “ladies of the night”. During a sales trip to the city, he invited them back to his hotel room and provided each with a measure of his whisky. The next day, their friends were trying to find “Guid Glendronach” for themselves. The demand ensured his brand was kept in stock around the city. Still, he wasn’t the savviest of businessmen and after a fire burned the distillery in 1837, he was bankrupt by 1842.
Walter Scott, owner of Teaninich Distillery, took over and showed the marketing chops Allardice lacked. He ramped up promotional efforts and turned Glendronach into a true commercial endeavour. Under his watch, it was one of the biggest whisky makers in the region, growing so much that by the 1860s, Glendronach was paying more duty than any other Highlands distillery. Becoming such a strong, self-sustaining business was no small feat. Glendronach’s remoteness made transporting in and out more expensive than if it was located along a train line like so many Speyside distilleries. “It must have been like living on the moon,” says Buchanan.
Captain Charles Grant, son of the founder of the Glenfiddich distillery, purchased the distillery in 1920 and followed through with Allardice’s vision of making Glendronach known for its single malts. Under Grant’s watch, labels on bottles dubbed it “perfect self whisky”. (Labels also indicated “most suitable for medicinal purposes”, but that’s just the wink of clever branding.)
William Teacher & Sons bought the distillery in 1960 and it became a cornerstone of Teacher’s blends. Six years in, the company built the windowed stillhouse and doubled the number of stills to four. Allied Distillers took the helm in 1976, and the declining market forced a shutdown in 1996, but a landmark success in the Allied years was the introduction of the flagship range of 12-, 15-, and 18-year-old bottlings, which continue to anchor the brand.
The distillery reopened in 2002 and was soon acquired by Pernod Ricard, which did away with the floor maltings and converted the stillhouse from coal-fire power to indirect steam heat. The Benriach Distillery Company took ownership in 2008. Acclaimed distiller Billy Walker refined the focus on sherry ageing. The Brown-Forman years have been ones of elaborate expansion for the brand — both physically at the distillery and philosophically with its new releases.
In 2020, the refurbished visitor centre was unveiled. It includes a new retail space, a tasting room, and a whisky bar and lounge with displays of rare and historic Glendronach expressions, including its oldest whisky, bottled in 1913. In 2022, Brown-Forman announced a £30-million investment in the brand, which has been put towards preserving the historic site and restoring the former maltings building, which today houses the yeast and CIP plant. The project, due for completion in 2026, will double the production capacity.
Last year brought the arrival of new packaging and the launch of the Master’s Anthology, which comprises three expressions: Ode to the Valley (port and sherry cask maturation), Ode to the Embers (peat) and Ode to the Dark (PX casks). Additions to the ultra-premium core range will begin rolling out later this year — each one a new chapter in the story of sherry casks.
“It’s all about the art of sherry cask maturation. Every whisky released will have had every drop in first-fill sherry. They’re all expressions of the duality of the distillery that’s always been there but never expressed or explored to the same degree,” says Barrie. “They’re robust and steadfast with a little chocolate and whiff tobacco in that base, but then they also have a Spanish flair — complexity and fruit and splendour, like top château wines. It’s the belle epoch of Glendronach.”
