(Or everything you wanted to know about Ardnamurchan but were afraid to ask!)
In this digital age of whisky websites and social media activity, there are very few secrets left in the whisky industry. Once upon a time, a new distillery would suddenly appear and no one knew much about it except for what might have been published in a subsequent book. Today, by the time a new distillery’s first release is bottled, it seems we’ve all followed the journey of the distillery breaking ground; building the stillhouse; installing the stills; starting production; and filling the casks. We’ve done the virtual tour of the distillery before the Visitor Centre has even opened its doors!
One of the primary reasons for this is simply because most of us will never get to make the journey to the distillery, and thus we live and drink vicariously through what we read and view online. Consider, also, that not all distilleries are blessed by geography: Auchentoshan and Glenkinchie, for example, are an easy bus ride from the big city centres of Glasgow and Edinburgh respectively, but things are trickier for the more remote distilleries that sit well off the tourist trail or are located on the fringes of Scotland’s reaches.
Ardnamurchan is one such distillery. If you’re looking to start up a new distillery, your choice of location is fairly critical. In addition to the most obvious requirement (i.e. a good water source), other considerations will be existing infrastructure, convenient access, shared resources, a ready-made tourist trail for visitors, and ease of transport for both the delivery of materials and the departure of spirit and filled casks. So – with all these essentials being key to a successful distillery venture – why would you choose to locate your distillery in one of the most far flung, remote, and inaccessible parts of Scotland? In the case of Ardnamurchan, the answer is pretty simple: Because they can.
Continue reading “Ardnamurchan – The western jewel of Scotland”