Our August WACWAC meeting will see us tasting the aqua viae from the home of whisky - Scotland.  It may be that our menu on that evening will include a whisky from the Loch Lomond distillery, so as this month's Whisky Exchange blog focused on this quiet but fascinating corner of Scotland, I thought it worth sharing... 

Loch Lomond distillery can be found a mile or so to the south of the eponymous loch, and has been quietly making whisky since 1964. For most of its life, the distillery has focused on producing blended whisky but the past couple of years has seen some big changes.

The History

One of the challenges of making blended whisky is sourcing enough grain whisky. Producing grain may be cheaper by the litre than single malt, but building a grain distillery takes a huge amount of investment. These days there are seven grain distilleries operating across Scotland, but if one of the owners decides not to deal with a blender, it can cause problems.

The threat of running out of grain popped up in the 1990s for a number of blenders, including Bulloch & Co – maker of High Commissioner – which bought Loch Lomond in 1986. The company decided to bring all production in-house, reducing its reliance on other whisky producers and giving it full control of the entire whisky-making process. The result is modern Loch Lomond, an incredibly flexible distillery where a huge range of spirits can be produced.

In 2014, a private equity firm bought Loch Lomond and despite initial fears that the distillery might be broken up or fade away, it has instead flourished. Master blender Michael Henry has been given the keys to the warehouses and asked to create a range of whiskies to showcase the distillery.

The Distillery

Along with a grain distillery – capable of producing 20 million litres of pure alcohol per year and used for making both whisky and vodka – the site in Alexandria is also the location one of the most intriguing malt whisky distilleries in Scotland.

Using three types of still, barley peated to three different levels and three kinds of yeast, Loch Lomond makes 13 styles of whisky from malted barley. This gives Michael the flexibility to create a wide range of single malts and blends.

The Stills

The first set of stills will be familiar to anyone who's visited a distillery in Scotland: traditional copper pots. Loch Lomond refers to these as swan-necked stills to distinguish them from the second type: straight-necked. These have a straight, tall body filled with a series of plates that push the resulting spirit to higher strengths – while a pot still will generally produce a spirit that is around 70% ABV, spirit is collected from the straight-necked stills at about 85% ABV. The distillery also does runs in the straight-neck still where the spirit is collected at 65%, giving yet another style to work with.

As the straight-necked stills aren't like regular pot stills, their use has caused issues in the past with the Scotch Whisky Association, the body that guards the definitions of Scotch whisky. There are still discussions as to whether the spirit from the straight-necked stills counts as grain or single malt, but for now it's all legally single malt.