This behind the barrel entry is focused on Bladnoch distillery, The oldest lowlands distillery. This also a featured piece for our upcoming tasting evening with Bladnoch on October 18th.
We would love to see you there to experince the craftsmanship of Bladnoch, Further details can be found Here on our tasting event page : Bladnoch Tasting Evening 18th Oct, Tickets Priced at £30 per person and event held in-store.
Bladnoch is a lowland distillery that was founded in 1817 by Thomas and John McClelland, The distillery is the one of most southern lowlands distilleries. Situated along the banks of the River Bladnoch in town of the same name, in the south west of Scotland near Dumfries and Galloway.
They quickly got to work in producing their whisky by 1823-1826, Baldnoch were producing 131,640 litres of whisky over that period. In 1845, around 20 tradesmen were employed at the distillery converting 16,000 bushels of barley to spirit per year. The next big development of Bladnoch came in 1878, when the site was enlarged and modernised to cope with rising production levels, over the next decade Baldnoch's site expanded to cover 2 acres and a further 50 acres armed by a proprietor, this led to over 230,000 litres produced per year.
During the 1890's misfortunes struck the distilling industry that are uncertain of the specifc reason, possibly a reduction in the nationwide production of barley or a rise in taxes. Other distilleries in local area of Galloway were closed and ceased to exist, luckily Bladnoch managed to survive.
Between the years of 1911 to 1937, A Irish company of WM Dunville & Co. owned the distillery until World War II broke out , when whisky production ceased but Bladnoch continued to produce malt until 1949, whish is when the disttilery was closed.
After 8 long years, in 1957 the distillery reopened its doors and production line, passing through various owners until 1983. Bell's acquired the distillery and set a project in motion to modernise and computerise the distillery for a modern age. Bell's ownership lasted for 5 year before being bought out by Unified Distillers Group that took over the project and were producing 36,000 litres per week, that is 8 times the levels of production a century ago in 1887.
1993 rolled around and Bladnoch once again was shut down and closed its doors. Less than a year later in 1994, Raymond Armstrong, while holidaying in the region came across the shut down and mothballed distillery. Armstrongs orignal plan was to convert the distllery into holiday homes for policemen of his home nation Northern Ireland, to provide a holiday space for police to escape the ongoing trouble at home. Armstrong however fell in love with the distillery and changed his plans.
The next several years Armstrong spent finding and replacing the equipment, some of which was wrapped in plastic in storage from when the distillery was closed. In Decemeber 2000 production at Bladnoch was finally restarted. with the first 8 year old Bladnoch coming out in 2009.
This was not last of Bladnoch closing its doors in March 2014 production ceased again after the owning company no longer existed, a year later the Bladnoch had a new owner, A Entrepreneur from Australia, David Prior, Believed to be first Australian Scotch distillery owner. Production then resumed a in 2017 with some new modern equipment replacing the old parts from previous owners.
We are excited to have Bladnoch to come and provide a tasting evening in what we will surely be a exciting and delightful evening trying some of expertly crafted whisky. We hope to see you there!
More Details of the tasting evening can be found on our tasting events page on the website, where can also see our upcoming events, even buy a discounted bulk ticket for 4 tastings for the price of 3.