Benrinnes Distillery

The original distillery was built at Whitehouse Farm at the foot of Ben Rinnes mountain by Peter Mckenzie in 1826. But it wasn’t to make much of an impact before being washed away by a flood three years later. John Innes built a new distillery a few kilometres away in the years that followed at its current site in Aberlour.

The Ben Rinnes gives more than just its name to this Speyside distillery. Water for Benrinnes is drawn from multiple springs on the mountain, similar to several other distilleries in the area.

The owners of Benrinnes suffered more ill fortune in the next hundred years. In 1834 the distillery was taken over by William Smith & Co upon John Innes’ bankruptcy. They would suffer a similar fate in 1864 and ownership of Benrinnes passed to David Edward. Where flood destroyed the first distillery, the second was devastated by a fire in 1896 prompting a major rebuild.

In 1956 under the ownership of the Distillers Company Limited the distillery was completely rebuilt from the ground up. No trace of the second distillery built by John Innes remains at the site today. Under DLC the floor maltings were discontinued in 1964 in favour of a Saladin box and the number of stills operating were doubled to six in 1966. The Saladin box was taken out in 1984 and malt for the distillery is now purchased elsewhere.

Up until 2007 Benrinnes practiced triple distillation of its whisky. However, that has now been abandoned in favour of a simplified process where the former intermediate stills now serve as two additional, smaller spirit stills. This helped increase the production output at the distillery. Other equipment consists of an 8.5 ton mash tun, and eight Oregon Pine washbacks. Spirits from the still are cooled using cast iron worm tubes. Current owners Diageo carried out upgrades of their own in 2012 to automate the facility. Now a single operator can control everything from a newly built control room.

More than a century and half passed between the foundation of Benrinnes and the release of the distillery’s first official single malt bottling. A 15 year old was released in 1991 as part of the Flora & Fauna range. This remains the only official bottling consistently on the market. It is sweet and floral on the nose but takes on a full bodied and spicy flavour on the palate.

A 21 year old Cask Strength single malt was released in 1996, and another Limited Edition 21 year old came out in 2014. The vast majority of spirits distilled at Benrinnes are bound for blends such as J&B, Johnnie Walker, and Crawford. But independent single malt bottlings have also been released by companies such as Douglas Laing and The Boutique-y Whisky Company.