One of the most popular Speyside whiskies. Benriach distillery was founded in 1898, before being mothballed barely two years later in 1900. For 65 years its stills sat quiet as instead the buildings were used to produce floor malts to its sister distillery Longmorn. To aid the cooperation of the two sites a private railway was created to ferry barley, coal, peat and barrels between the two, with the locomotive affectionately named ‘Puggy’.
The obscurity was not to last, after changing hands multiple times over the decades the distillery was eventually purchased by an independent consortium headed by Billy Walker, an industry veteran and former director of Burn Stewart. Scrapping the old lines and instead bringing in the far bolder character of its landmark 12 and 16 year old expressions, Billy Walker and the team took Benriach from a footnote in whisky history and thrust it into the spotlight of every scotch enthusiast from Aberdeen to Auckland.
Winning various awards such as 2007’s Distillery of the Year from Malt Advocate magazine to Global Whisky Distiller of the Year, World Whiskies Awards 2015, Benriach has gone from strength to strength.
