Glen Keith distillery

History

Construction of Glen Keith began in 1957 on the site of a meal-mill and was completed in 1960. It opened in 1958 as the first new distillery in Speyside since the 1898 whisky crash, contrasting with the much older Strathisla distillery. Initially equipped with three stills for triple distillation, two more stills were added in 1970 when production switched to double distillation. This new method introduced Scotland's first gas-fired stills, and steam coils were installed three years later.

The distillery's output originally went into blends such as Chivas Regal, Passport, and 100 Pipers, while Chivas Brothers used it as a laboratory for innovations including developing its own yeast strains. In the 1990s, an official bottling named Glen Keith 1983 was released, later replaced by a 10-year-old single malt; peated malts called Glenisla and Craigduff were also produced. The distillery was mothballed in 1999, underwent extensive reconstruction starting in 2012, and reopened in June 2013 with an intended annual production of six million litres, almost all for export blends.