Glenturret

Glenturret claims to be the oldest active distillery in Scotland, but as is often the case with extravagant PR claims, the truth is never quite so simple. What is not in question is that distillation has taken place in the Crieff area on the site now occupied by the Glenturret distillery since at least 1775, with some sources indicating the presence of illicit stills going back at least to 1717.

The distillery on Glenturret's site was originally called Hosh in 1775, and indeed there was a nearby (unrelated) distillery using the name Glenturret from 1826 until the 1850s. The Hosh distillery bought the right to use the name Glenturret in 1875, its centenary year.

However, after a lull during WWI, the 1920s were unkind to Glenturret. The distillery was badly affected by Prohibition, and fell silent in 1921 before officially closing in 1923. The last cask of spirit left the premises in 1927, and in 1929 Glenturret was dismantled, with all the equipment being sold and the distillery buildings being converted for farming use.

Thereafter Glenturret was closed for three decades until the intervention of James Fairlie, who bought and refurbished the distillery with new buildings and completely new equipment in the late 1950s.

Glenturret is thriving these days with the most-visited distillery visitor centre in the industry, thanks to its association with owner Edrington Group's Famous Grouse blend (into which the vast majority of Glenturret's very small output goes). Glenturret is also famous for Towser, a vicious distillery mouser (perhaps because of her silly name), who entered the Guinness Book of Records in the 1980s and was estimated to have killed nearly 29,000 mice before passing away shortly before her 24th birthday.

A very small proportion of Glenturret's stock is kept back for release as a single malt. The official bottling was a 12 year-old until recently (the new standard line is a 10 year-old) with some single cask bottlings appearing from time to time. Independent bottlings are extremely rare.