Glenturret claims to be the oldest working distillery in Scotland, a hotly contested title as it is so difficlut to prove. The site of the distillery certainly seems to have been used for distilling as early as 1775 when it was known as 'The Hosh' (Gaelic meaning 'foot'), and some accounts even suggest there was illegal distillation happening there as early as 1717. However, licensed distilling on
the site only started in 1818 when John Drummond began making whisky.
Unlike many small Perthshire distilleries of that period, it survived the trials of the 19th century and in 1875 it changed its name from The Hosh to Glenturret – taking the name from a nearby distillery which had failed 20 years previously. The downturn of the 1920s hit the distillery hard, and in 1928 Glenturret was emptied and turned into farm buildings. It remained closed for 30 years until the intervention of James Fairlie, who bought and refurbished the distillery with new buildings and completely new equipment in the late 1950s (so is Glenturret as we see her today one of the oldest, or one of the newest distilleries in Scotland?).
It was, for a decade, part of Rémy Cointreau (1981-1993) before joining Highland Distillers [now Edrington]. In 2002 Edrington invested £2.2 million in up-grading the visitor facilities and creating what they named ‘The Famous Grouse Experience’. This popular attraction welcomes around 100,000 visitors a year. Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of Glenturret's very small output goes into the Famous Grouse blend, and single malt bottlings are rare.
Glenturret is also famous for Towser, the distillery cat, who entered the Guinness Book of Records in the 1980s and was estimated to have killed nearly 29,000 mice in her lifetime.Show more