Glen Elgin

Glen Elgin is a single malt distillery located in the Speyside region, close to the city of Elgin. It has long been known for being a major component in the hugely popular blended Scotch whisky of White Horse, which sells over 12 million bottles worldwide per year. Bottlings of Glen Elgin are scarce but worth searching out, as it is a very tasty single malt.

The whisky from Glen Elgin is fruity, fragrant and malty with a soft and gentle feel. This style is perfect for use within blending, but is also very charismatic in its own right.

There is only one official bottling from Glen Elgin - the Glen Elgin 12 year old - and this has notes of baked apple, sweet honey, oak spice and malted biscuits. Other limited editions are occasionally bottled, most recent an 18-year-old expression in the Diageo Special Releases of 2017. Alternatively, older Glen Elgin whiskies can be found within the independent bottling sector from time to time.

The distillery has an 8.4 tonne mash tun and operates 16 mashes per week. There are nine wooden washbacks made from larch and they run a fermentation time of 80 hours.

Glen Elgin has six small onion-shaped copper pot stills (3x wash stills and 3x spirit stills) and six worm tub condensers, one for each still. Very few distilleries in Scotland have these. A worm tub is a traditional style of condenser that turns vapour into spirit. They are huge wooden tanks filled with cold water and a copper pipe runs from the still and coils down through the water.

The distillery shares the same water source as the neighbouring Linkwood distillery. There are only two small warehouses on site, which are home to some of the oldest casks of Glen Elgin. The annual production capacity is 2.7 million litres.

Glen Elgin was established in 1898 and is located on the edge of the Speyside city of Elgin, near the secluded hamlet of Fogwatt. It was founded by William Simpson, a former manager at Glenfarclas distillery, and James Carle, a local banker. The distillery was the last designed by Charles Doig, the renowned distillery architect from the late Victorian period. However, it was beset with issues and this resulted in just five months of production in its first eight years.

Production started consistently in 1906 when J. J. Blanche & Co. took ownership. They operated Glen Elgin until 1930 when it was taken over by Scottish Malt Distillers (SMD), who licensed it to White Horse Distillers. This began the distillery's long association with the White Horse blended brand, which has remained ever since and continues under the current owners Diageo. It forms part of their Elgin Group of distilleries alongside Glenlossie, Linkwood and Mannochmore.

The popularity of the White Horse brand resulted in a major expansion at Glen Elgin in the 1960s. This saw four stills added to bring the distillery to its current number of six. These stills worked for almost 30 years before being replaced in the 1990s. Glen Elgin was closed between 1992 and 1995 as a result.