Glenkinchie Distillery

It’s common for distilleries to be mothballed or closed entirely for years to decades at a time. It’s also common for distillers to set up shop in old mills or other industrial sites that are suitably placed. What’s less common is for a distillery to be converted to a completely unrelated usage before being brought back to life. But that’s what happened to Glenkinchie in mid 19th century when it went through an adolescent phase as a sawmill.

Brothers John and George Rate built a distillery by the name of Milton at Tranent in 1825 just a short distance from Edinburgh in the Scottish Lowlands. By 1837 the brothers were listed as the licence holders of a Glenkinchie distillery at the same location. However the business struggled in its early years and in 1853 John Rate sold it to a local farmer who ran it as a sawmill for the next three decades.

In 1881 a consortium of investors based in Edinburgh bought and reopened Glenkinchie as a distillery when they saw the scotch market picking up. They formed the Glenkinchie Distillery Company and carried out extensive refurbishments a few years after taking over.

Glenkinchie was one of five Lowland distilleries which banded together to form Scottish Malt Distillers in 1914 in the (accurate) hope that this would help them survive tough times that were hitting many of their peers. Glenkinchie stayed open through the 1910s and thereafter. SMD would become part of Distillers Company Limited which was later folded into current owners Diageo.

During the Second World War, the vast majority of distilleries in the UK were forced to cease operations due to rationing of barley along with the majority of foodstuffs. Only a handful of distilleries were allowed to continue production while the war in Europe was on, of which Glenkinchie was one.

The distillery these days is equipped with a 9 ton mash tun, six wooden washbacks, and a single pair of stills. The stills make use of worm tubs with their copper worm tubes for the cooling of spirits. The distillery has a production capacity of 2.5 million litres of spirits per year.

Using worm tubs to cool spirits is known to impart a sulphurous flavour to the resulting whisky. But in Glenkinchie’s case that is fades during the aging process letting the light and floral character of the whisky come to the fore.

There are currently two main bottlings from the distillery. A 12 year old was released in 2007, replacing the older 10 year old from the Rare Malts Range, and the Distiller’s Edition which is finished in Amontillado Sherry casks. The 12 year old is a classic Lowland whisky, with a highly floral nose, with more fruit and sweetness on the palate and a dry, herbal finish. Due to its lightness it’s often considered an excellent aperitif whisky. The Amontillado Sherry finish on the Distillers Edition adds more notes of spice and nuts to the Glenkinchie character.