Glenfiddich Distillery

Glenfiddich’s story

Glenfiddich is the most famous Scotch whisky distillery and biggest selling single malt brand in the world. The distillery is located in the town of Dufftown in the Speyside region. The name is taken from the Fiddich Glen where it is located and translates as ‘valley of the deer’ from Gaelic. This explains the origin of Glenfiddich’s famous stag logo.

The water for production is taken from the Robbie Dhu springs, which flow into the River Fiddich. The site has grown to be massive so as to meet the worldwide demand for the Glenfiddich spirit. It has a capacity of over 20 million litres per year, making it Scotland’s joint-largest distillery alongside Glenlivet. This follows a massive expansion, which saw a second distillery built next to the original one. This opened in 2020. There are also 45 warehouses for maturation, a cooperage, coppersmith and bottling centre on site.

Much of Glenfiddich’s world domination of the single malt market is due to its continued innovation and early pioneering outlook. Glenfiddich was the first distillery to consistently bring single malt whisky to the international market in the early 1960s with the release of Glenfiddich Straight Malt in 1963. Glenfiddich was also the first single malt to be sold in a travel retail shop at an airport in 1963 (Shannon in Ireland to capture transatlantic passengers stopping over), the first to open a visitor centre to the public in 1969 and the first single malt to sell over 500,000 cases of whisky in a calendar year. Following early successes, other distilleries followed Glenfiddich’s strategies. Now, Glenfiddich is sold in nearly 200 countries and accounts for 35% of all Scotch single malt sales in the world.

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Glenfiddich’s history

When William Grant and his children began construction of the Glenfiddich distillery in 1886, they cannot have imagined the massive success that it would become. Grant and his family built the distillery by themselves by hand and with no professional help. William Grant had learnt the whisky trade during 20 years working at the Mortlach distillery and total construction costs were £800. £120 of this was used to buy two second hand stills from the Cardow Distillery in Speyside, which is now known as Cardhu. All of the stills that are currently operating at Glenfiddich are exact replicas of these originals, so as to maintain the original quality and flavours. The first spirit famously flowed from the still on Christmas Day 1887.

They had early success with their whisky popular amongst the blending community. This led to the building of the Balvenie distillery on neighbouring land several years later in 1892. William Grant & Sons was formed in 1903 and the distillery currently still owned by the sixth generation of the Grant family. The whisky produced was used in blends including its own Grant’s range, which was started when a large client went bankrupt. However, most is bottled as single malt in Glenfiddich’s extensive domestic and travel retail ranges.

In 1957, the iconic triangular bottle was first introduced. It was designed to stand out on the shelves of retailers and is now considered a design classic. The move into the export and travel retail markets led to a massive growth in Glenfiddich’s popularity. This was where the triangular bottle came into its own, enabling bottles to be transported in an interlinking way not possible with cylindrical bottle shapes.

The company built the Kininvie distillery in 1990 on land between Glenfiddich and Balvenie to produce spirit for their blends. This has an annual capacity of 4.8 million litres. This took some of the pressure off both distilleries to supply the Grant’s range (and more recently Monkey Shoulder). Similarly, the 12-million litre capacity Ailsa Bay in Ayrshire was constructed by William Grant & Sons in 2007. This has enabled over 90% of all whisky produced at Glenfiddich to be bottled as single malt.

• How to pronounce Glenfiddich? glen-fidd-ick
• Country: Scotland
• Region: Speyside
• Founded: 1886
• Current owners: William Grant & Sons
• Production capacity per year: 21 million litres
• Mash tun: 4x 10 ton stainless steel
• Washbacks: 48
• Stills: 43
• Visitor centre: Yes

Glenfiddich Distillery
Dufftown
Banffshire
AB55 4DH
tel – +44(0)1340 820373
www.glenfiddich.com

Did you know?

Glenfiddich was one of the only distilleries to actually increase production during the Prohibition era in America (1920-1933). They believed demand would be high once restrictions were lifted. And they were right. Glenfiddich was able to meet the massive demand, while others failed to keep up.