Balmaud is the very essence of a farm distillery. It stands in a fertile landscape of golden, ripening barley and bright yellow rapeseed amidst the Strachan family’s 1,750-acre agricultural enterprise at King Edward, some four miles from the market town of Turriff, deep in rural Aberdeenshire. It is a distillery that echoes the eternal rhythms of seasons and land.
Other whisky-making ventures in Aberdeenshire include Glendronach and Knockdhu, near Huntly, and Glen Garioch at Oldmeldrum, all very long-established and deeply embedded in their local communities, while the closest existing distillery to Balmaud is Macduff, some eight miles to the north, on the banks of the River Deveron.
As the new kid on the block, the Balmaud team has adopted the strapline ‘New School Distillers, Old School Farmers,’ and while they may be ‘old school farmers,’ in an apparently timeless landscape, Balmaud is very 21st century in many ways. Two 2.3MW wind turbines have been installed to power the farming and distilling operations, with blades spinning lazily by the roadside.
Thermal vapour recompression (TVR) technology on the pair of stills significantly reduces energy use and there are plans to install an anaerobic digester to treat co-products of distilling into bio-methane gas for use as a source of power.
On arrival at the distillery site, the sheer scale surprises. The production building, warehouse, and associated structures cover the same large footprint as the old farm steading that previously occupied the space. When the idea of creating a distillery was first mooted, renovating and converting the steading was considered, but a lack of height to accommodate stills led to the buildings being demolished and replaced by bespoke units.
Founder and chairman of Balmaud Distillery Co is Wilson Strachan, whose family has been farming at Mill of Balmaud since 1958. Wilson Strachan is joined in the distilling venture by daughter Shannon Green, who serves as managing director, her husband ‘AJ’ Andrew James Green, and her brother Kyle, who handles branding and marketing activities.
The family currently cultivates 200 acres of rapeseed, 200 acres of wheat, and 1,300 acres of barley, producing around 3,000 tonnes of malting barley per year, while also operating a quarrying business a couple of miles from the distillery.
The Strachans may be new to making whisky, but they certainly know their grain, having supplied malting barley to the whisky industry for the last 50 years, achieving a formidable reputation for its quality along the way.
Balmaud is a Highland single estate ‘grain-to-glass’ distillery in the truest sense, and according to Shannon, “We are four generation farmers, and we decided to build the distillery to make more out of the grain we were growing. My grandfather had the idea years ago, and it stuck in my father’s mind.”
Central to Balmaud Distillery is manager Allan Findlay, who has been part of the project from its earliest days, initially driving machinery on-site when called upon and painting anything and everything that needed painting.
Findlay was born and raised on a farm near Keith, in the heart of Speyside, and he recalls that his father fed his cattle spent grains supplied by Knockdhu Distillery. Like many young men brought up in the Keith Area, Findlay started work for Chivas Brothers, which owns Strathisla and Glen Keith distilleries in the town and vast estates of warehousing, and blending operations nearby.
As he recalls, “I worked mainly in warehousing, cask filling and disgorging into blending vats, checking for ‘leakers’ — sometimes in distilleries such as The Glenlivet and sometimes in the Malcolmburn bond at Mulben, close to Keith.”
He then joined Whyte & Mackay as an operator at Tamnavulin Distillery in 2010, before acting as whisky operations manager for independent bottler, blender, and bonding organisation Aceo Ltd. Aceo owns the Murray McDavid range of independent bottlings and Findlay worked from its hub at the silent Coleburn Distillery to the south of Elgin, where his role included evaluating forthcoming releases.
Missing the production side of the whisky business, he joined the Speyside Distillery near Kingussie as manager, remaining there for five years before taking up his current role at Balmaud. He says, “Here it’s all new and exciting and you get to make your mark, being in from the start, and I like the fact it’s a farm distillery.”
Working alongside Findlay is Iain Kerr, formerly manager at Wolfburn Distillery in Caithness. Findlay explains, “Production was always his focus, and he fancied coming back closer to home. He was born in Aberlour, and, like me, he was attracted to the idea of being involved in a new distillery. I’ve known him for many years, and when there are just the two of you, it’s vital you have a reliable, experienced operator for when you’re away.”
The first casks of spirit were filled on site in February of 2025, and at present, some 50 are filled each week, with 1,200 tonnes of home-grown barley being used annually. The barley is malted by Baird at the firm’s Inverness Maltings, though long term the Strachan family plans to create its own on-site maltings.
According to Findlay, “We’re looking for classic Speyside character spirit — green, grassy, and floral. We ferment for 162 hours, and you get shortbread, apple, pears, and honey. The new make is more complex with that length of fermentation.
“Although it’s very early days, as it’s maturing, we’re getting a typically Speyside fruit note coming through, and some in PX sherry casks is already developing a really nice ginger spice note.”
The maturation regime comprises filling around 80 per cent bourbon barrels, mainly first fill, along with some French oak casks and oloroso and PX sherry butts, plus a quantity of octaves that should mature quite rapidly due to their small size.
There is currently warehousing space for 10,000 casks on site, and ample space to construct more warehouses when necessary. There is an aspiration to develop a dunnage warehouse where small casks and port pipes may
be stowed.
Findlay explains, “If we bottle a three-year-old whisky, it will have to be very good. Then we’ll do four- and five-year-olds, and we will use age statements.”
A bottling line has recently been installed and was first used to bottle the initial batches of Balmaud Scottish Dry Gin, created to a recipe devised by Findlay. According to a Balmaud spokesperson, “The nose opens with soft citrus, orange, lemon, and a delicate hint of pomegranate. On the palate, a sweet, fruity start gives way to clean citrus notes, with a light touch of juniper on the finish.”
Vodka production is also now underway, while Caribbean-style rum is produced in a double retort still on site. Whisky is, however, the main long-term focus and anyone keen to be involved with the journey may purchase a first-fill ex-bourbon barrel (200 litres) or a first-fill ex-sherry hogshead (225 litres) and follow its progress for up to 10 years before bottling.
Inevitably, the question arises of when members of the public will be able to see all of this activity for themselves, and the answer is that at some point during 2026 it will be possible to visit Balmaud on a pre-booked basis. A bespoke visitor centre with seven-day opening is planned for the future, but for now, the emphasis is on putting the finishing touches to the site and laying down spirit for the years ahead.
As a genuine grain-to-glass farm distillery, it is enterprises like Balmaud that the novelist and one-time excise officer Neil M Gunn had in mind when he wrote in Whisky and Scotland that “To listen to the silence of 5,000 casks of whisky in the twilight of a warehouse while the barley seed is being scattered on surrounding fields, might make even a Poet Laureate dumb.”
