Glenglassaugh

It went through several periods of closure and production until the next industry crisis of the mid 1980’s when like many other distilleries it was closed again and this time it seemed like the writing was on the wall for the distillery. But this was where luck played its part once again. In 2008 it was purchased from the then owners Edrington by a Dutch investment house called the Scaent Group for £5 million. They began by bottling and releasing some of the aged stocks that came with the purchase of the distillery but had a groundbreaking idea to release some of the distilleries new make spirit.

This was quite a bold and potentially disastrous move by the distillery’s owners, but you what, this supposed awkward malt that had actually found a place in blends, such as Famous Grouse, Laing’s and Cutty Sark, was actually very drinkable pretty much straight off the still, well at least at 50% abv. Over the next three years a few other variants of new make were released until the spirit had become ‘legal’ as they say and the first bottling of what was called the ‘Revival’ was released. Those early bottlings of Revival leaned rather heavily on the influence of sherry casks but like in the case of the new make, they were rather entertaining.

The Revival was followed by the Evolution in 2013 which was aged wholly in American oak and a lightly peated bottling called Torfa in 2014, after the distillery had once again changed hands, becoming part of the Benriach Distillery Companies portfolio. So, it would seem that the distillery now has a bright future and like a number of distilleries almost totally reliant on single malt sales.

(Image Copyright James Mortimer Photography)