The Glasgow Distillery has an exciting story to tell this month, as the company prepares to release the first in a landmark series of whisky bottlings.
Opened in 2014, the distillery in Hillington, on the outskirts of Glasgow, launched its first product, Makar Gin, later that same year.
It would be another year before the distillery had its whisky stills up and running, filling the first casks in March 2015.
Ten years on, the business is going strong, with its Makar Gin and Glasgow 1770 range of whiskies both winning awards and establishing a name for themselves among trade and customers alike, along with the company’s rum and vodka ranges.
This month the distillery will release a small-batch ten year-old whisky bottling for its community of fans, with further ten year-old bottlings expected later in the year for the wider trade.
The facility itself, located as it is within an industrial unit, may have a strong claim to the title of ‘Scotland’s least attractive whisky distillery’.
But, as global marketing manager Sebastian Bunford-Jones quipped to SLTN on a recent visit to the site, “Who needs a fancy building? The proof’s in the juice.”
The distillery’s core 1770 range of whiskies is made up of three expressions: a double-distilled non-peated whisky, a double-distilled peated whisky and a triple-distilled non-peated whisky.
All three are non chill-filtered and bottled at 46% ABV at their natural colour.
They also all retail at around the £50 mark (and the trade pricing will obviously be less than that) – something that’s become an important consideration for the distillery.
“We are very true to our, I guess you’d say our industrial roots here,” said Sebastian.
“I’d say we could possibly be Scotland’s least aesthetic distillery, but what we do have is a proper hands-on process, a proper attention to quality. We look at it as a very Glaswegian way of making whisky. It’s kind of no-nonsense; we’re putting in the hours, the effort, the money to create a good quality product, and we are putting it out there at an accessible, affordable price.
“And that accessibility comes through in the pricing, but also in how we talk about the whisky, how we promote it.
“We don’t have big marketing budgets, there’s not big campaigns, we’re really just putting quality product on the market. And as whisky geeks ourselves, we’re producing the whisky and pricing it at the point at which we would want to enjoy it.”
It’s rare for a single distillery to produce three different styles of spirit, but the variety doesn’t end there.
In addition to its core range, the company also produces its Small Batch Series – experimental releases that have been matured in weird and wonderful casks that include calvados, tequila, Marsala, Madeira and tokaji.
In keeping with the distillery’s commitment to transparency, each release includes in-depth information on its label, including the age and amount of time spent in the finishing cask.
“We introduced the small-batch series a couple of years after (the core range),” said Sebastian.
“I think that’s what has ignited the interest in the distillery – the extensive range of cask finishes we’re doing, and the quality of the whiskies we’re producing at a relatively young age. I think that’s what people are really connecting with; the quality, the cask management, which obviously contributes to the quality, but then also the accessibility of what we’re producing.”
After producing its first unpeated spirit in 2015, The Glasgow Distillery produced its first peated run in 2016, with the first triple-distilled spirit coming off the stills in 2017.
In 2019, two additional stills were installed, doubling the production capacity to 220,000 LPA (litres of pure alcohol) a year. That’s the equivalent of between 400,000 and 450,000 bottles, although the company is only releasing around 70,000 each year, with the rest of the spirit left to mature.
With the first ten year bottlings appearing, it’s an exciting time for the 1770 range, but the distillery has plenty of other strings to its bow.
The Makar Gin range now includes Makar Original, Old Tom, Oak Aged and Cherry, with the G52 vodka range including the Fresh Citrus and Rich Coffee vodkas.
On the rum side, the company’s Banditti Club brand is built around rum imported from Madeira, then matured at the distillery in Glasgow.
There are various versions, including a spiced rum, golden rum and PX sherry cask matured rum.
And then there’s Malt Riot, the company’s blended malt, which uses Glasgow 1770 as a base, blended with other single malts from around Scotland.
The name of each brand has a particular meaning or reference.
Glasgow 1770, for example, is a tribute to the year the original Glasgow Distillery opened, in the city’s Dundashill (it closed in 1902).
Makar is the name for a Scottish poet or bard; G52 is The Glasgow Distillery’s postcode.
Banditti Club is named for a club that ran rampant in Glasgow in the 17th and 18th centuries, drinking rum and generally playing havoc.
And Malt Riot is a reference to a series of events that kicked off outside Glasgow in 1725.
At the time, the British Government was planning to extend the English malt tax into Scotland (the Acts of Union had only been signed in 1707 and not all laws had been transferred).
The decision was notoriously unpopular and led to riots, including in Glasgow, where the home of MP Daniel Campbell – who supported the tax – was destroyed.
Not only were the riots an important historical event in their own right, they also helped change the course of Scotch whisky.
Sebastian explained: “With the compensation money that Daniel Campbell got from the government he actually bought the island of Islay and parts of Jura. And his grandson founded the village of Bowmore and encouraged the farmers to plant surplus barley and to start distilling it into whisky.
“Islay as a whisky region as we know it today can be traced back to the 1725 malt riots.”
Much like The Glasgow Distillery itself, that seems like a story that’s worth telling.
