Why GlenAllachie Is the Whisky to Watch Right Now

A question was posed to us recently by a curious reader who wanted to know: “Why GlenAllachie is the whisky to watch right now”.

The Speyside whisky maker (pronounced Glen-alec-y) has certainly been taking a greater share of headlines in recent years. Since 2017, the post-Billy Walker era has meant product launches, redevelopments, rebrands, production changes, and press releases aplenty. 

Most have been very receptive to this former blend staple stepping out into the limelight with a signature range of single malt Scotch whiskies, while others take a more cynical view of the GlenAllachie transformation. But like it or not, it’s a hot name in whisky. 

So, as David Byrne once asked, “Where is my beautiful wife?” Wait, no. Not that. Although it is a good question. No, as Byrne said, “Well, how did we get here?” Let’s have a good ol’ dig into the story of GlenAllachie Distillery. 

A short history of Glenallachie Distillery

GlenAllachie is young for a Scotch whisky distillery. It was only founded back in 1967 by Mackinlay-McPherson, a company formed from a merger of Newcastle brewers and blenders John Ewan McPherson & Sons Ltd with blenders and merchants Charles Mackinlay & Co. 

Set at the foot of the Ben Rinnes mountain in Aberlour, Speyside, the building was designed by Lothian, Barclay Jarvis & Boys architect S. Lothian Barclay but the famous William Delme-Evans (of Jura, Macduff, and Tullibardine fame) also acted as an advisor.

The distillery was built to supply the demand for light and delicately fruity Scotch whisky (Mackinlay’s Legacy and Finest Old Scotch Whisky specifically) aided by a boom in the US during the 60s and early 70s. This demand would soon fall away and the Whisky Loch of the 1980s followed. In this time of turmoil and closure, GlenAllachie (along with Jura) was bought by Invergordon Distillers in 1985 and subsequently mothballed (closed but maintained) just two years later. 

Campbell Distillers (later part of Pernod Ricard) bought it in 1989 and restarted production, doubling the stills from two to four to increase production. GlenAllachie once again quietly chugged away in the background creating whisky for blends as it had done originally, suppling brands like Passport, 100 Pipers, and Chivas Brothers. There was only the occasional official single malt. In the 1980s a 12-Year-Old whisky was released. The odd small batch sherried expression and a cheap NAS bottling in the UK made it to market too. 

But mostly GlenAllachie was a blend component. One that had fans within the industry, who noted its contribution to significant bottlings. In his Malt Whisky Companion (1989), Michael Jackson said GlenAllachie was a “superb example of a super, complex Speyside whisky of the delicate type”. Adding “It has never been known as a single malt and it is not currently being bottled, which is a shame – it deserves a greater reputation”.

A certain Billy Walker stepped in to change that. Possibly the most important date in GlenAllachie’s history is 2 October 2017, when a consortium of investors led by Walker completed the purchase of the distillery.

GlenAllachie Distillery and Billy Walker

The story of Billy Walker

A native of the whisky-producing town of Dumbarton, Walker entered the industry armed with a BSc Honours Degree in Chemistry from The University of Glasgow in 1967 and a passion for whisky and the science behind it. 

His first gig was at Hiram Walker & Sons in 1972, where Ballantine’s was made at the time, and his role covered almost all aspects of production. Stints at Inver House and Burn Stewart Distillers followed before he created The BenRiach Distillery Company with partners in 2004. Beginning with Benriach, distilleries Glendronach and Glenglassaugh were soon added. Then on 1 June 2016, all three were sold to Jack Daniel’s owner Brown–Forman. 

Creating a new GlenAllachie the Walker Way

Now Walker was left with bags of cash and no distillery. This is where GlenAllachie comes into the picture. Impressed by the distillery’s infrastructure, water supply, size, and warehousing capacity, he felt this was an ideal place to take his Brown-Forman money and habit of capitalizing a letter in the middle of a distillery name (Glenallachie became “capital A” GlenAllachie only recently, you know).

Liberated by little expectation but armed with bags of potential, Walker set about doing what he does, turning a humble working factory into a household name. How? Well, Walker has a few greatest hits he likes to trot out when he gets his hands on a distillery: 

Establish a range of single malts. 
Change production to prioritise quality over quantity. And tell people you’re doing that.
Use your connections and capital to source top-notch casks. Then get the whisky into those funky casks, brother. 
Bottle it au naturel – no colour, filtration, or funny business. 
Make it look the part, this is a business after all. 
Use the distillery’s relatively blank state to create a new story
Profit.

Creating a new GlenAllachie the Walker Way – part two

Which is what happened at GlenAllachie. Just nine months after Walker took over, GlenAllachie launched its first range of single malts. It also reduced its output by 20% to favour longer fermentations and put huge amounts of money into its cask management policy, particularly on sherry casks. Ask the average person and they’ll tell you GlenAllachie is a sherried whisky. It wasn’t even really a single malt before 2017, so that’s a recent reputation it’s forged. Some even credit Walker as a key contributor to sherried whisky’s wider modern popularity. 

With previous distilleries and GlenAllachie, Walker has demonstrated an ability to pick out the good stock from the bad and re-rack the latter into quality casks to give it a lift. He’s an exceptional blender, which can hide a multitude of sins or elevate good whisky into great. Unsurprisingly, 50 years of experience goes a long way. Sherry casks and virgin oak casks also have the benefit of imparting a lot of colour and colour sells. Cool casks also sell these days and you only need to glance at the GlenAllachie distillery page to see the variety of cask finishes available. 

Everything GlenAllachie bottles is non-chill-filtered, natural colour, and at a good strength – all of which are Walker absolutes too. He even has a particular route to market. The whisky didn’t suddenly appear on supermarket shelves at low, low prices, Walker is an advocate for building methodically through the private, independent sector (favouring retailers like us). It’s a patient process of building the brand and engaging with informed consumers (that’s you) who will act as honest ambassadors. As the whisky wasn’t familiar to a larger consumer base too, that meant there was an opportunity to define the narrative. 

Why GlenAllachie is the whisky to watch right now

Of course, there are naysayers. Specifically with GlenAllachie, some think the move away from lightly peated malt is a mistake. For others, the cynicism is directed towards Walker. Maybe it’s that such a comprehensive, calculated approach lacks a little romance, or that it’s all too WalKer, not GlenAllachie. Like he’s the distillery character, not the profile of the spirit. He’s certainly good at telling his story. But is he too much the story? Check the brand’s history page. It goes from 1967 to 2017, with no mention of the in-between. It’s BW and AW. Before Walker and After Walker.

But then detractors are the price of success. The changes to focus on quality in production are real and long-term will have an effect, likely a desirable result. At a time when most people are pumping whisky at volume, perhaps inadvisably (let’s hope not and sales pick up), it’s quite refreshing to see a distillery pull back on the reins. The revitalisation does mean cashing in on some stock in the short term too, but Walker has demonstrated the benefit of generating a huge amount of value early on that can be re-invested. There isn’t much history to talk about with GlenAllachie, so focusing on flavour and production is understandable. Of course, it will take years to know how the spirit distilled since 2017 will stand up. But a lot of the policies implemented at GlenAllachie and beyond just make sense. Many people would do the same with the equivalent ability and capital. And many who have both have done much worse.

The long and short of it is, that the Walker way has worked for GlenAllachie. In September 2023, the distillery announced a 40% increase in revenue from the previous year. It reported £20.7 million in sales. Look at the industry right now. You won’t find that many people truly thriving. Scepticism is prudent, dismissing success stories entirely – less so. It’s this approach that is fundamentally the reason why we’re being asked why GlenAllachie is the whisky to watch right now. I’ve been in this industry since 2017. Nobody asked me about this distillery then. I mean nobody really asked me anything then, but you get my drift. 

It’s not all Walker, of course. Lots of people work at GlenAllachie and help make it what it is. The most obvious answer to why GlenAllachie is the whisky to watch right now is that people like the way it tastes. How does it achieve that character? Let’s take a look at how GlenAllachie creates whisky. 

How GlenAllachie makes whisky

GlenAllachie can produce four million litres of alcohol (LOA) per annum, but as stated before, the decision was taken to reduce output, so it now makes 900,000-1 million LOA. This move was part of a wider adjustment to enhance the distillery character, which since 2017 has been defined as “clean with notes of sparkling fruits, vanilla, butterscotch, and biscuity notes”.  Burly enough to stand up to bold cask types, light and fruity enough it keeps the distillery DNA is the sweet spot. 

Water, malting, mashing

The distillery’s water supply is drawn from damheads northeast of Ben Rinnes. Blackstank Dam is the largest of the two and provides cooling water for the condensers, while Heanshead Dam is much smaller and provides process water for mashing. The water runs over granite and peat and is held in regard. 

The malted barley is unpeated and comes from local producers on the Moray Firth coast (we’re guessing Portgordon Maltings). The original Porteus Mill, installed in 1967, can produce 9.4 tonnes of grist (grounded malted barley) for every mash. This is mixed with hot water in another 9.4-tonne machine, the semi-lauter mash tun. GlenAllachie uses a four-water cycle, not the common three while using the same volume of water per kilogram of grist. 

The first extracts most sugars, the second retrieves residual sugars, and the third cycle prepares the grain for disposal or use as animal feed. But by using the same total water volume across the process but in four stages, you can extract additional sugars without diluting the wort. This method increases efficiency, maximises sugar yield, and ensures a rich, fermentable wort without altering the water-to-grist balance.

Long fermentation, different distillation, cool casks

The resulting liquid, or wort, is then fermented in one of eight stainless steel washbacks. Fermentation here is long, typically 160-4 hours but it can range from 140 to as much as 180 hours. The increase is to allow for the development of esters and other flavour compounds that enhance the character of the whisky. The resulting liquid, the wash, is sent to the stillhouse for distillation. 

A traditional double distillation regime is operated at GlenAllachie, but where most distilleries use a single low wines and feints receiver (a vessel to collect intermediate distillate and less desirable fractions) for all its stills, at GlenAllachie, each pair of wash and spirit stills has a dedicated receiver. This setup ensures the strength and volume of the distillate are more consistent between production runs, as you’re isolating the distillate from each pair of stills and minimising variations that could occur if all distillates were combined in a single receiver.

After distillation, the spirit goes into one of 16 warehouses holding 50,000 racked casks on-site to be aged. The annual wood budget comes in at over £2 million and GlenAllachie flexes its independence by exploring a limitless array of intricate and creative wood experimentation. Walker’s connections mean collaborations with interesting producers globally to create an enviable inventory of rare and quality casks. 

Other features and sustainability

GlenAllachie also has a visitor centre which opened on the first day of the Spirit of Speyside Whisky Festival 2019. Over the years it’s been improved, including a makeover in June 2023, and now includes a whisky bar and tasting lounge, outdoor seating (with beautiful views of Ben Rinnes) and a range of tours and experiences. Education, advocacy, whisky tourism… they’re all important to the complete modern distillery. 

As are looks. At the beginning of 2024, The GlenAllachie unveiled a rejuvenated aesthetic for its single malt brand, including a new logo and packaging.

Being green is essential too. A recent grant from the Scottish Industrial Energy Transformation Fund enabled the distillery to install Mechanical Vapour Recompression technology to improve energy efficiency by 50%. To power the MVR, 134 solar panels were installed in a neighbouring field. This progression allows the distillery to move away from using natural gas to eco-friendly electricity and alternative green sources, including biogas.

GlenAllachie whisky

The main event remains the whisky itself and for a brand that has only been releasing a consistent range of single malts for eight years, GlenAllachie sure has a lot of it. 

The GlenAllachie Core range

GlenAllachie 8 Year Old

The eight-year-old single malt joined the distillery’s core range in 2022. It’s aged in Pedro Ximénez and oloroso sherry puncheons, virgin oak casks, and red wine barriques which makes it a super fruity and rich little sipper.

GlenAllachie 12 Year Old Whisky

The flagship expression from the Speyside distillery is made using whisky matured in Pedro Ximénez, oloroso and virgin oak casks. Expect lots of fruit, oak and vanilla.

GlenAllachie 15 Year Old Whisky

Added to the core range in 2019, this 15-year-old single malt was treated to a finishing period in sherry casks, a combo of puncheons and hogsheads that previously held Pedro Ximénez and oloroso. This might be the highlight. It’s rather lovely. 

GlenAllachie 18 Year Old Whisky

Casks were selected from across the distillery’s 16 warehouses, some of which date back to the 1970s, to create GlenAllachie 18 Year Old. It’s rich in nutty toffee, robust malt, and honeyed fruit.

The GlenAllachie series and limited editions

Alongside the main events, the brand also releases a cask-strength 10-Year-Old single malt in batches. The most recent was Batch 11, a single malt matured in Pedro Ximénez, oloroso, red wine and virgin oak casks bottled at 59.4% ABV. Similarly, The GlenAllachie 21 Year Old Cask Strength launches annually in small quantities and usually sells out right away.

GlenAllachie is also notable for the number of ranges it’s created. There’s the Virgin Oak Series, launched in 2022, which includes a Scottish Virgin Oak finish, a Spanish Oak Finish and a Hungarian Oak Finish (you can see how experimental things are getting already). Then in 2024 came the Sherry Series which showcased three 9-year-old expressions: the Oloroso Cask Finish, the Fino Cask Finish, and the Amontillado Cask Finish.

In the brand’s Wine Series, there are more interesting finishes including the Marsala Wood Finish, Sauternes Wine Cask Finish, Douro Valley Wine Cask Finish, and Grattamacco Wine Cask Finish, while January 2023 saw the release of GlenAllachie Cuvée whisky, single malt inspired by the wine style (Cuvée is a French term that means a blend of more than one variety of grape) by blending four exceptional wine finishes into one unique expression. So far we’ve had a 9 Year Old and 10 Year Old Cuvée whisky to enjoy.

To celebrate 50 years in the whisky industry for Walker, the brand released The GlenAllachie Past, Present and Future Series; a trilogy comprised of a 100% Sherry-matured 16-year-old, a 16-year-old Mizunara Virgin Oak Cask Finish (the first time the brand released this cask type), and a four-year-old Peated Single Malt (the first peated GlenAllachie single malt release of the Walker era and the first-ever distillate produced under his production modifications. Last year saw the introduction of another Mizunara Cask Finish as well as The GlenAllachie 35-Year-Old, the oldest expression yet from the Speyside distillery. 

Meikle Tòir

In September 2023, GlenAllachie unveiled a peated whisky brand called Meikle Tòir, which translates to ‘big pursuit’. Four single malts followed, The Original, The Chinquapin One, The Sherry One, and The Turbo, the latter being an annual release in limited batches with a unique ppm. The core whiskies are peated 35ppm and mainland St. Fergus peat, a sweeter variety than its coastal counterparts, is used. This is all post-2017 spirit and early signs are very good.  

MacNair’s and White Heather

The deal to buy GlenAllachie also included blended Scotch whisky brands MacNair’s and White Heather. The latter was discontinued in the 1980s but was reintroduced in the spring of 2021 with blends created by Walker. The recipe has a high single malt content, with whiskies coming from the Highlands, Islay and Speyside, as well as some vintage GlenAllachie.

MacNair’s relaunched a year after Walker and Co. completed the purchase of GlenAllachie. The range comprises single malts made with peated Islay and peated Speyside malt blended together with older GlenAllachie, including a non-age statement (matured in first-fill bourbon, oloroso, virgin oak and red wine casks), 12-year-old (matured in first-fill bourbon, red wine and Pedro Ximenez casks) and 21-year-old (oloroso, virgin oak and red wine casks). All were bottled without any additional colouring or chill-filtration at 46% ABV. 

The MacNair’s Boutique House of Spirits also includes rums, all selected by Walker and bottled in Scotland with no artificial colour or chill-filtration. So far we’ve seen rum from Panama and Jamaica’s Clarendon Distillery. If recent history tells us anything, the sky is very much the limit for this company.

All of which means you’re very much spoilt for choice. No complaints here.

There’s plenty of reasons to speculate why GlenAllachie is the whisky to watch right now. I’d say the simple answer is Walker hits his mark and the whisky looks smart, tastes good, and doesn’t cost silly money (although I’d like to see that price point come down a touch, particularly on the entry bottlings).

What do you think? Be sure to let us know in the comments below. 

You can buy GlenAllachie whisky, White Heather whisky, MacNair rum, and more from Master of Malt. 

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