Diageo’s £35 million investment in reopening silent distilleries has refocused the world on a powerhouse brand

When Diageo made its 2017 announcement that it would reopen the silent distilleries of Brora and Port Ellen in Scotland, it kickstarted a growth in value for both brands that sees no sign of stopping. With a £35 million investment programme driving the company’s ambition, the first of these two sister distilleries to reopen its gates is Brora. 

The village of Brora is on the east coast of the northern Highlands of Scotland. It’s named for the river that runs through it and has always been a hardworking spot. It’s been home to a coal mine, fishing port, stone quarries, a thriving wool industry and the original Clynelish Distillery, which opened in 1819 and later became known as Brora. Each of these industries in turn closed their doors or declined, with the distillery shutting up shop in 1983. Now, its reopening has brought the attention of the world back to this part of the Highlands once more and Diageo’s investment seems to be paying off. 

Rarewhisky101 has been charting Brora’s performance in its brand index since 2012 and, while enjoying steady growth before 2017, Diageo’s announcement that year appears to have kickstarted a growth spurt that has seen the brand hit remarkable heights. Additionally, the RW101 index charts a near 36% growth in year-to-date performance in 2021 alone. Meanwhile, Sotheby’s set a new world record auction price for Brora in 2019 when it sold a bottle of its 1972 Limited Edition 59.1% 40-year-old for £54,450 (€64,236). 

Record breaker: Brora Limited Edition 40-year-old Single Malt. 59.1ABV (1972)

Diageo hasn’t left the market wanting since. It released a 1978 bottle of 40-year-old Brora to mark the distillery’s 200th anniversary in 2019. Drawn from a dozen casks of vintage stock from 1978, just 1,819 were bottled, a number that also marks the 1819 year of the distillery’s birth. It was priced at launch at £4,500.

In May 2021, Diageo released a trio of Brora vintages from casks laid down in the 1970s and 1980s to celebrate the reopening. Called the Brora Tryptych, it’s priced at £30,000 (€35,386) and only 300 sets of this very limited release were produced. Designed to define the brand in flavour, vintage and history, each of the 50cl bottles tell a different story from the distillery. The first, Elusive Legacy, is said to be an earthy expression that was bottled at 42.8% ABV and only created in a short burst of production in the brand’s history. The second of the trio is Age of Peat. This 1977 expression is bottled at 48.6% and is a slice of the flavour profile of the 1970s when peating was increased. The third and final expression is called Timeless Original and drawn from 1982 stocks and is said to perfectly capture the waxiness that made Brora famous.  

New horizons: the £30,000 Brora Triptych Single Malt

What made the distillery succeed from its early days is what Diageo wanted to recapture with this revival. It took three years to restore the distillery – with modern adaptation added, including a biomass boiler that runs on woodchips from northern Scotland. The original stillhouse, now 202 years old, was taken down brick-by-brick and rebuilt by hand exactly as it would have appeared back in 1819. The original copper pot stills received a complete refurbishment and were reinstalled into their original positions. 

Brora master distiller Stewart Bowman rings the bell at the official reopening of the distillery

It’s a slice of living history and at the time of relaunch, master distiller, Stewart Bowman, a son of the last exciseman at Brora, commented that “In 1983, my father wrote in an old distillery ledger ‘Commencement of Brora Distillery silent season (undetermined period)’. Growing up in the village we often wondered whether Brora would ever return, but today we filled the first cask. It is with great pride that I can now say to my father, the Brora community, and all the ‘old hands’ that worked at Brora and helped to craft a legendary whisky, that the stills are alive and we are making Brora spirit once again.”

There are a limited number of visits to the distillery available and at a cost of £300 for a standard tour or £600 for a deluxe visit, they are a rare treat inside this new jewel in Diageo’s crown. Everyone who buys one of the Triptych sets receives a personal invitation to meet with the master distiller and get a private tour of this historic operation.

If you won’t be in the highlands any time soon but interested in starting your own Brora story, you could begin with one of these two bottles, both available here at the singlemaltshop.com.