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LAND OF THE WILD SPIRIT

Once the hub of a thriving smuggling and illicit whisky industry in the 1700's and early 1800's, The Cabrach was also home to three legal distilleries; Blackmiddens (known as "The Buck"), Tomnaven and Mains of Lesmurdie. Established in 2024, The Cabrach Distillery is reawakening the legacy of this community after a long sleep of over 170 years.

Our handcrafted process reflects the historic methods once used by the distillers of the past within The Cabrach - taking inspiration from research conducted by The Cabrach Trust. Our stills are small and our process is painstakingly slow to produce a Single Malt Scotch Whisky of unparalleled provenance and repute.

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INSPIRED BY THE PAST - REBUILDING THE FUTURE

Milling

Our Spring barley is locally sourced from Historic Banffshire and includes our annual crop of home barley grown at Inverharroch Farm. All our malted barley is very lightly peated, adding a subtle hint of smoke to our wild spirit

Our malted barley is then milled on site with a higher proportion of flour content to slow our mashing filtration process

20% husk ~67% grits ~ 13% flour

Mashing

With our production process all built on one level, our mash tun is raised above floor level with a unique viewing window. After Mashing in, we run a slow and gentle Vorlauf, recirculating our worts to achieve clear worts that will become the building block of our fruit forward single malt.

5 hours mash ~ 500kg grist ~ 2700 litre wort

Fermentation

Crafted from Douglas Fir in Dufftown, our 6 washbacks are pitched by hand with a mix of two types of dried yeast. Our week long fermentation process is one of the longest in the industry - allowing a natural malolactic fermentation to take place which pushes our fruity flavours and encourages an oily, full bodied spirit.

168 hours ~ 3.5kg Yeast (Brewers + Distillers) ~ 8% abv wash

Distillation

With the slowest distillation processes in the Scotch Whisky industry, our stills run at approx. 2 litres per minute and our spirit cooled through wormtub condensers allowing maximum copper contact to promote our fruity esters.

6 hours (per distillation) ~ 2500l Wash Still ~ 1800l Spirit Still ~ 65-75% abv spirit cut

Buck Still

The "Buck Still" is a unique 1250l direct-fired pot still, cooled via a small internal worm tub. This still's design has been inspired by historical research and archaeological digs into The Cabrach's whisky heritage.

Blackmiddens Distillery, which operated from 1825-1833, was understood to have run via a double distillation process using a singular pot still.

Maturation

We aim to lay down casks not just for tomorrow, but for the future therefore our maturation policy reflects this with 50% of our spirit being filled into First Fill American Oak casks from Heavens Hill.

To create something true to our heritage, we are also maturing a significant amount of our spirit in French Red Wine Barriques as a nod to the whisky smugglers from The Cabrach who would transport their illicit spirit to the markets in Aberdeen in red wine casks.

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