When Annandale Distillery roared back to life in 2014, it was the culmination of a seven year project to bring the historic facility back from the dead.
Originally opened by the Donald family in 1836, Annandale passed through various hands until being taken over by the mighty John Walker & Sons in the late 1890s.
The original distillery ceased production in 1918 and, for almost a century, that was that, until owners professor David Thomson and Teresa Church came along in 2007 and decided to resurrect it.
The founders of specialist sensory research company MMR, the couple had a pretty strong idea what flavour profile they were going for.
Then they worked with an industry legend, the late Dr Jim Swan, to help them design a set of stills that would deliver just that.
“Because that’s what they do – market research on flavour profiling – they took the whisky map, looked for a gap, thought ‘we need to be here’ and did it in reverse and retrofitted it,” explained Annandale’s head of sales, Steven Rankin.
“‘The tasting notes are that, that and that’ and basically said to Jim Swan ‘that’s what we’re after’ and he said ‘this is how the still needs to look’.”
The distinctive ‘Annandale-ness’ the couple were looking for was an orchard fruits flavour profile, said Rankin, which could be suited to the various cask types the distillery wanted to use.
Production at the revived distillery began in 2014, and Annandale is now capable of producing 675,000 litres of pure alcohol a year.
The distillery produces two core expressions: the unpeated Man O’ Words, named for Scotland’s bard, and the peated Man O’ Sword, named in honour of Robert the Bruce, who was at one time the lord of Annandale.
The Burns connection was strengthened further in 2018 when the distillery owners acquired The Globe Inn in Dumfries, which was a favourite spot of Burns and famously boasts an etching from the bard himself on one of the upstairs windows.
Unusually, both core expressions are single malts that are put out as single cask bottlings, bottled at cask strength, without chill filtration and at their natural colour.
The approach, said Steven, is ‘about doing things properly’.
And it appears to have paid off, with the Man O’ Words 2018 Double Oaked ex-bourbon cask (number 504) having won an award at the World Whiskies Awards Scotland just last month.
Outside of the core range, the distillery produces blended whisky Storyman in partnership with Scottish actor James Cosmo.
“Would it be easier for us if we didn’t do single cask? Of course it would,” said Rankin.
“And I genuinely think that if we’d done an Annandale single malt – even if we lost the uniqueness of single cask – we’d have done really well. The place is incredible and the liquid’s excellent.
‘Single cask is the purest form of whisky. There’s no hiding place’
“But it just wasn’t the vision of the owners. It was about doing things differently.
“It’s the purest form and there’s no hiding place.”
Both the peated and unpeated spirit are matured in a variety of different casks, including ex-bourbon casks, Oloroso sherry hogsheads and ex-fino sherry butts as well as Swan’s signature STR (shaved, toasted and re-charred) barrel.
Pioneered by the late whisky expert, STR casks are ex-red wine casks that have been transformed through an exacting process that involves shaving the top layer of wood, to remove the strongest of the wine flavours, before toasting and re-charring the staves to create a cask that lends a distinct flavour to the whisky without overpowering the spirit.
Though he passed away in 2017, Swan’s influence remains in the Annandale product to this day, from the fermentation times of the wash to the shape of the stills right through to the STR casks resting in the distillery warehouse.
It’s a connection the casual whisky fan might not care about, but the more informed connoisseur will take notice of.
Over a decades-long career Swan consulted with a number of distilleries in Scotland and around the world, helping them define their signature style and flavour profile.
In Scotch whisky, those names include Kilchoman, Nc’nean, Kingsbarns and Lindores Abbey as well as Annandale.
Rankin described the late pioneer as ‘an absolute one-off’ who was core to the development of the distillery.
“I’ve heard stories of Jim Swan,” he said.
“He came up and said ‘for what you’re looking for, your fermentation should be this’. He came on the Friday, tried the fermentation, which was about 85 hours.
“He then came back on the Monday and they’d left it over the weekend. He came in and tried it and said ‘you ran this over the weekend, didn’t you’. He almost knew to the hour what we’d done. He came once and said ‘you’ve taken the cuts at a different time’. That’s incredible stuff. An absolute one-off. And that’s great for us.”
And passing that knowledge onto Scotland’s bar staff – and getting them fired up about Annandale’s product range – will be an important part of the distillery’s growth moving forward, said Steven.
“Going into 2026 we want to complement our off-trade listings with a greater on-trade presence, which will be crucial for driving sales moving forward,” he said.
Having worked for drinks companies including Whyte & Mackay, The Glasgow Distillery and Innis & Gunn, it’s a subject Rankin knows well.
‘When your whisky’s in the premium category, you need an on-trade presence’
“When your whisky’s in the premium category, you really need to have an on-trade presence so that people can try it and sample it,” he said.
That’s arguably even more the case for customers considering purchasing a cask.
Rankin explained: “If you were buying a cask and you went for a sherry cask or a bourbon, you would have a rough idea what you were getting, but because we experiment with calvados, with mizunara, with all types of wood…
“Casks are thousands of pounds upwards, and if I said to you ‘we’ve got this really unusual one’, you’d say ‘great, but what does the whisky taste like’? Because you don’t want to take the risk if you’re spending three, four, five thousand pounds.”
Bar operators and staff can also expect to see Annandale have a bigger presence at events like whisky festivals in 2026, as the team look to tell their story to as many whisky fans as possible both in the UK and internationally.
