Inside the green distillery…Aberargie!

TL; DR: After another successful Fife Whisky Festival under our belt, we got to visit a new Fife distillery, Aberargie! Owned by an independent bottler company, Morrison Distillers (Carn Mor, Old Perth and Mac Talla), they have a clear plan for their whisky. They gave us a great tour, and what an amazing tasting! 

(missed Part 1?)

And here we are, after the opening dinner (!), the two Fife Whisky Festival sessions (!!) and the Sunday morning Adelphi masterclass (!!!), it was finally time for the final event: the visit to Aberargie distillery!(!!!!) Compared to other new distilleries, they are quite under the radar, although we were already aware of its existence since our first trip to Lindores in late 2021, as the distillery can be clearly seen from the road to Newburgh. It is owned by the Morrison Distillers group (formerly Morrison & Mackay), which also has connections to other distilleries, in particular Bowmore. Their malt is not on sale yet, so their main business is still that of independent bottlers. They own the Carn Mor brand, for single casks or small batches, Old Perth, a fully sherry-matured blended malt (coming in different configurations) and the recent Mac-Talla, a range of Islay single malts but from undisclosed distilleries (they were very adamant about not saying from which one). 

We were welcomed by Greame, head of production, and Thomas, the brand ambassador who was at the festival the day before. Thomas told us that we were the first visitors ever: what an honour! The site buildings include an office/bottling hall, the production (where we headed) and of course the warehouses. Inside, Maree, brand manager, and David from production were waiting for us in a meeting room. Tasting mats had already been prepared, with four “Old Perth” marked spots, and four “Mac-Talla” ones. Once everyone took their seat, Greame started explaining the history of the company, which used to focus on fruit liqueurs, and talked about their connections to Bowmore, Auchentoshan and Glen Garioch. The distillery started operating in 2017, and barley is sourced from their own surrounding farm. It’s a farm-to-bottle site, except for malting that is done at Simpson. During this chat, we started with the tasting: first, an 8y cask sample destined to become part of a bottling from the Old Perth range, fully matured in ex-Oloroso casks, and reduced to 48% abv. The second dram was from the same (undisclosed) distillery, same age, same abv, but distilled in a different way (apparently this distillery has both stainless steel and copper condensers) and fully matured in an ex-PX cask. The third sample was the Old Perth 12y (46%, chill-filtered, natural colour), one of the three core range expressions (the others being the Original, NAS, and the cask strength). 

At this point, the group was split in two for the tour of the distillery. We were in the second group, with David and Thomas. As usual, we started with barley storage and milling; the mill is a modern one, near the two malt bins with a capacity of 28 tons, and it can process batches of 2 tons. Almost all the whisky they produced so far is unpeated, and they almost uniquely used Golden Promise barley. They aim for 9 mashes per week in their semi-Leuter mashtun, collecting the sugars through the usual 3 waters at increasing temperatures. They recently increased the number of washbacks, from 6 to 9, all stainless steel, where fermentation takes from 3 to 6 days and it is ignited by 20 kg of dried yeast. They have two stills, a 10,000-litre wash still and a 7,500-litre spirit still, both using steam coils as heat source. They collect the heart of the distillation from 74% to 60.5%abv, one of the largest cuts we heard of. Because they do a 5-week production, their capacity is currently around 250,000 litres of alcohol per annum.

The two groups were then reunited in the courtyard, just before getting inside the racked warehouse. There, they have temporary tanks where the spirit (both theirs and the sourced one) is kept before being casked. It’s quite a big operation, which made sense considering the availability of bottles from their independent bottler side. Still in the warehouse, we could spot a number of distilleries’ names and different types of casks. We walked a bit more inside, until the point where seven big butts were on display: contrary to most of the current sherry casks, which are seasoned for the whisky industry, these were bodega casks, which were actually used in sherry production for decades. They’d originally acquired ten, but only seven survived, and they are used to put to rest the whisky that ends up into the non-aged Old Perth (Original and Cask strength expressions), in a Solera-like system. We had a sample of it (again diluted to 48% abv), and we found it dirty but exquisite. 

After this, we headed back to the meeting room, where food was waiting for us. While we were eating, they started pouring the final four drams. Three of these were from the Mac-Talla range, starting with the Flùran (53.8%, single cask ex-bourbon), from the Flavourscape collection. This series is a collaboration with artist Marzia Sileno, who created a series of drawings inspired by the whiskies. In this case, the drawing recalls the flowery and light character of the whisky. This was followed by the Mac-Talla Mara, their cask strength expression (58.2%), a vatting of 25% first fill and 75% refill ex-bourbon cask: it’s a very spritely and delicious Isla drams, we both loved it (well, Gianluigi a few days later at home…). Finally, a novelty: the Mac-Talla Oloroso, a vatting of about 20 caks bottled at 54.8%, that was going to be announced the very next day: a delicious sherried peated malt. The final dram was a real banger: a cask sample of a 1996 Bowmore from a 2^nd fill ex-oloroso, at a natural strength of 47.4%. What can we say, we had a very few drams that good so far, an explosion of tropical fruits, surrounded by soft sweet smoke. A gem.

The event ended there, although it lasted almost an hour more than expected – not bad, it was really worth it. We made our way to the office for the pop-up shop they’d set up for the occasion, to grab some “souvenirs”. This was an amazing event, truly very well planned and definitely for whisky geeks and, by what we could see, organised by whisky geeks. They were extremely generous with the drams, they also provided 30ml samples for the drivers! We will keep our eyes peeled for their release, although it’s not going to be out soon. In the meanwhile, we can enjoy their fantastic whiskies from the Mac Talla and Old Perth ranges, which we got to know quite well during the visit. A visit which, by the way, marked Teresa’s 100th distillery visit!

The day ended with us driving back to Cupar to help Justine and Karen clean up the Corn Exchange after the third and final masterclass, and we managed to get some leftover from the Woodrow’s of Edinburgh masterclass (and because we’d run out of sample bottles, we temporarily stored them in coffee cups). What a great weekend, we’re already looking forward to next year. 

Until next time, slainte!

Morrison Distillers

Link: https://www.morrisondistillers.com/