The Cairn Distillery

Building work started in July 2020, once COVID restrictions on construction were lifted.^6,7,9 Morrison Construction built a circular distillery, much of it natural stone, with a sedum roof and a drum whose glass-fronted second floor looks across the River Spey.^6,7,9 In June 2021 the copper stills, mash tun and washbacks arrived at the £20 million site, made by Forsyths in Rothes, Elgin and Buckie.¹⁰ In January 2022 Mhairi Winters, formerly a team leader at the Balvenie and Kininvie distilleries, became distillery manager.⁵ In July 2022 Gordon & MacPhail announced that the first spirit had flowed, after weeks of test runs to set its character.^7,11 Cask No. 1, a sherry butt, had been filled on 27 May 2022.^3,7 Around half of the new spirit is matured in first-fill casks and taken to warehouses at Benromach.^3,7 The contractors handed over the finished building on 29 September 2022, with around 90% of the work done by firms in the north of Scotland.^9,12

Its malt comes from a couple of local maltsters, mostly high-yield barley varieties such as Laureate and Sassy.³ It has 6 stainless steel washbacks, the tanks where sugary water from the mash ferments into a beer called wash.³ Each washback has a water jacket to control the temperature, and fermentation lasts 90–100 hours.³ It has 4 wash stills for the first distillation and 2 spirit stills for the second.³ Forsyths installed onion-shaped copper pot stills, aiming for a medium-bodied spirit with little contact between the spirit vapour and the copper.³ The stills feed shell and tube condensers, which turn the vapour back into spirit.³ The site could make 2.2 million litres of alcohol a year if it worked around the clock.³

For 128 years Gordon & MacPhail, an independent bottler, sent casks to over 100 Scotch whisky distilleries to be filled with new spirit.^1,13 From 2024 it stopped filling casks at distilleries it did not own, to focus on Benromach and The Cairn.^1,13

Sources

13 sources. Something wrong? Report it from the menu at the top of the page.