The GlenAllachie

Overview

Glenallachie is a malt whisky distillery on Speyside at Aberlour founded in 1967. It has mainly produced whisky for blends. Under Chivas ownership it released 2 official bottlings at cask strength, one of 16 and one of 18 years old. A new core range of 10, 12, 18 and 25 year old whisky was released in 2018 under the new ownership, as well as additional single cask releases.

Location and contact details

Location" Location: The GlenAllachie Distillery, Glenallachie, Aberlour AB38 9LR
By Visit Type: By appointment only
Co-ordinates" Co-ordinates: 57.455860, -3.227544
Web" Web: https://theglenallachie.com/
Twitter" Twitter: The GlenAllachie (@TheGlenAllachie)

Facts and figures

LocationBanffshire
Founded1967
FounderMackinlay McPherson
OwnerThe GlenAllachie Distillers Company Limited
Water SourceSources on Ben Rinnes
StillsTwo wash, two spirit

Tours

The Wee Allachie Tour

£15

Go have a wee peak around the production area and explore the art of creating the exceptional whiskies. You’ll be introduced to their world, learn about the history of GlenAllachie, and finish off with a wee nip of three quality drams.

Tour duration approximately 1 hour.

The Connoiseurs Tour

£50

Bring out your inner geek on this fantastic all areas tour of GlenAllachie. You’ll be taken on a journey behind the scenes, including a visit to one of the warehouses. Finish off your exclusive tour with a five dram tutored tasting of some of the exceptional single malts.

Tour duration approximately 2 hours.

Review: Connoisseur Tour (20:04 on 26/09/2019)

Price: £50

I toured the GlenAllachie at 1400 after been at Tomintoul; that was a fantastic tour, leaving the GlenAllachie a high bar to avoid disappointing. I booked the tour via an email exchange with Karen, the manager of the visitor centre; the website has tours listed at 1330, but Karen asked if I could do 1400 as they had a different tour booked at 1330. This was fine with me, but on arrival found the people booked on the previous tour hadn't bothered turning up.

This has been a bit of a pattern so far where I have ended up alone on tours as other people booked in hadn't arrived, and Graeme at Tomintoul had mentioned the same thing. It is both very disrespectful and disruptive to a distillery to not show up for a tour you have reserved.

The tour was a one-on-one tour with Karen. I did the Connoisseur Tour which includes four expressions of The GlenAllachie Whisky and a more in-depth tour where you see the filling store and warehouse.

Karen has worked as a tour guide for quite a long time, previously at Glen Garioch and followed Billy Walker to Tomintoul a few months after he bought the distillery. This experience was apparent in her knowledge of the whisky making process. The tour was comprehensive and well presented.

In addition, as we went round, she introduced me to members of the production staff who took time to speak to me. There were two in particular I need to mention:

  1. Mike who showed me the computer system which monitors and controls the equipment in the distillery; he didn't know this, but I am a bit of a Geek who is massively interested in computers. I'd pretty much only ever seen similar computer systems before when walking past them (the exception was Waterford where I got a brief show-and-tell), but Mike gave me a detailed talk through the process and how it is controlled.
  2. Stuart in the filling room who took a break for his work to discuss what he does.

The five samples provided at the end of the tour will vary, but will usually include distillery exclusives rather than the core range which you can buy anywhere. It did include one from the standard range which was the GlenAllachie 25 Year Old Single Malt Whisky. I was driving so the samples were provided in glass jars for me to take away so the usual tasting session at the end of the tour was abbreviated.

The tour from Karen was very good, but adding in Mike and Stuart added a huge amount more which you would not usually hear on a tour.

History

The GlenAllachie distillery was built in 1967 by Mackinlay McPherson. It was bought and mothballed by Invergordon Distillers in 1985. They sold it to Campbell Distillers in 1989, who restarted the distillery. In 2017, the distillery was sold to Billy Walker, Graham Stevenson and Trisha Savage, who came together as The GlenAllachie Distillers Company Limited, along with two blended Scotch whisky brands - White Heather and MacNair's.

[nearby type="distillery"]This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Glenallachie distillery, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.Information correct as of 04/01/2020

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