Longmorn

THE BEATING HEART OF SPEYSIDE LONGMORN

The Longmorn Distillery was founded back in 1893, and is still producing malts from the Speyside region. Today, it is part of the Pernod Ricard Group. The distillery is located, not surprisingly, in the town of Longmorn, which is in the district of Moray, very close to the town’s other distilleries. Longmorn was founded by John Duff in 1873 and is one of the only distilleires to avoid a lengthy period of inactivity.

Duff had a long history with distilling before opening Longmorn and even played host to the Japanese Grandfather of whisky, Masataka Taketsuru, who came to Scotland to learn to distill. Duff foresight saw him construct railroads direct to the distillery that allowed him to bring in the finest barley from all over the UK and to use the same railraods to export his whisky to the rest of the world.

Longmorn sources its water from local springs, the Burnside wells. It operates four wash stills and four spirit stills, providing an annual capacity of 4.5 million litres per annum, up from 3.5 million after the 2012 renovations. The mash tun, also installed in 2012, has a capacity of 8 tuns, each stainless steel. The whisky is matured in three types of casks: ex-Bourbon, new American oak and ex-oloroso sherry casks from Jerez in Spain. Barley comes from the Moray region and peat from the nearby Mannoch Hill. The distillery moved from direct coal firing of the stills to steam during the 1993 modernisation. The old steam engine is still on the property, and can be called into service if needed. There is even the old waterwheel, which used to power the stills.

The whiskies produced here have proved extremely popular as blending components and Longmorn malts, with their pronounced aromatics, balance and sweet notes, well known for their significant contribution to Chivas Regal. Their 15-Year-Old was replaced by the even more admired 16-Year-old, in 2007, and a 23-Year-Old in 2017 This is a distillery which attracts the attention of independent bottlers of single malts for good reason, knwon as every distillers’ second favourite malt.

Longmorn Distillery does not have a visitors’ centre and is not open to the public.