Balmenach

MacGregor called it Balminoch, Gaelic for 'the middle farm'; family member Robert Bruce Lockhart told how an exciseman urged MacGregor to license his 'peat shed'.^1,2,3 In his 1887 book, Alfred Barnard described a plant covering three acres, with one wash still, one spirit still and a timber worm tub.⁶ It had its own maltings, and only local peat was used to dry the malt.⁶ Barnard put annual output at 90,000 gallons and wrote that the whisky was much used for blending.⁶ He also wrote that one of its warehouses was the first iron warehouse licensed by the excise authorities.⁶

In 1897 the distillery was incorporated as the Balmenach Glenlivet Distillery Company.^3,4,7 A private railway linked it with Cromdale station from 1897 to 1968, though Wikipedia's Balmenach article says it ran until 1969.^3,8 In 1922 hard times forced the MacGregor family to sell to a consortium of blenders that included Peter Dawson.^4,5,7 In 1925 the consortium and the distillery became part of the Distillers Company Limited.^3,4,9 Its spirit went into the Johnnie Walker and Crabbie's blends.^3,4,9 In 1930 it passed to Scottish Malt Distillers, the malt production arm of DCL.⁴ The distillery closed in 1941 and reopened in 1947, after its facilities were expanded.^3,8

In 1962 a third pair of stills took it from four stills to six, and a new mash house was built.^4,5,10 In 1964 Saladin boxes replaced the floor maltings, and the pagoda ventilators came off the malt kilns.^2,4,11 Saladin boxes are concrete troughs where screws turn the barley while air blows up through it.^2,4,11 The mash house was renovated in 1968, and in 1983 the steeping tanks that prepared barley for the Saladin boxes went out of use.^12,13 United Distillers took over in 1987, and in June 1993 the distillery was mothballed as demand for Scotch fell.