Dalmunach Distillery

Highly modern in its construction style, but still elegant, and with a classic appeal to it, Dalmunach distillery is the newest distillery in the portfolio of Chivas Brothers, a subsidiary of the French drinks conglomerate Pernod Ricard.

It was built on the site of the old Imperial distillery at Carron in the Speyside region. Though technically the Imperial distillery was in existence from 1897 to 2012, it spent most of that time closed. It first shut its doors thanks to the Pattison Crash the year after it opened. There were periodic bursts of production during the mid 20th century, before it shut its doors for the final time in 1998 under Distillers Company Limited.

Chivas Brothers acquired the site of the old Imperial distillery in 2005. This wasn’t a deliberate buyout, the mothballed site was simply an asset that fell into their hands when they took over Allied Domecq.

At first Chivas seems to have had little inkling what to do with the site. At one point it was even put up for sale as residential flats. Unsuccessfully so. Cut to seven years later, in 2012, when a decision was made to demolish the old distillery and build a new one in its place.

The construction of Dalmunach was managed by Douglas Cruickshank, who had formerly worked at the Imperial distillery as a boy before its closure. Work began in 2013, and Cruickshank incorporated much of the old distillery’s materials back into the new building for their legacy value.

But other features are extremely modern. Such as the heat recovery technology which has helped to make Dalmunach one of the most energy energy efficient distilleries operating, using 38% less energy than the industry average.

The distillery is equipped with 13 ton mash tun and 16 stainless steel washbacks, with a short fermentation time topping at 62 hours. It’s eight stills are all arranged in a circle purely for the pleasing aesthetic value it brings to the already stylish distillery. The distillery has the capacity to produce 10 million litres of spirits a year, a massive scale investment in a new distillery by Chivas Brothers who wanted to keep ahead of the booming demand for whisky in recent years.

The first bottling of Dalmunach single malt was released in August 2019, a 4 year old cask strength edition. Hopefully this is a sign that more released can be expected before long.