Auchroisk

The Auchroisk distillery was built by Justerini & Brooks in 1974, to ensure a steady supply of malt whisky for their J&B blend. The land and springs, including the water source, Dorie’s Well, were bought for £5million. Although launched as a blending malt, master blender Jim Milne declared the quality of the bourbon-matured whisky sound enough to be sold as single-malt; however, it was still missing something. Accordingly, the spirit was given a year in sherry casks, which produced a much fuller, and fundamentally, more complex flavour. Although not sold as Auchroisk (pronounced ‘OH-thrusk’) – the company deemed the name difficult to read – the distillery’s own bottlings were first sold, up until 2001, under the name Singleton and in 1986 the first bottling, a twelve year-old, was released under this name.

A very large distillery with substantial storage facilities- enough to hold 265,000 casks – Auchroisk is large enough to hold storage for other distilleries as well. Originally part of the group IDV, comprising of W A Gilbey and Justerini & Brooks, in February of 1972 the group was purchased by Watney Mann and, in July, merged with Grand Metropolitan. After the merger between Guinness and Grand Metropolitan in 1997, Auchroisk is currently under the ownership of Diageo. The distillery is still young and, as such, the range is small, based mainly around the ten year-old.