About Benriach Whisky Distillery
Distillery Number
01343 862888
Distillery Founded
1897
Distillery Capacity
2 800 000 litres
Distillery Status
Active
Distillery Owner
Benriach Distillery Co
Distillery Address
Longmorn, Elgin, Morayshire IV30 8SJ
Distillery Website
www.benriachdistillery.co.uk
1897
John Duff & Co founds the distillery.
1899
John Duff gets into financial trouble and pawns his company. Finally, the bank sells Benriach to the Longmorn Distilleries Company.
1903
The distillery is mothballed. The maltings is kept running to supply the ‘sister’ distillery Longmorn with malt.
1965
The distillery is reopened by the new owners, The Glenlivet Distillers Ltd.
1978
Seagram Distillers plc takes over ownership.
1983
Seagrams starts producing a peated Benriach.
1985
The number of stills is increased from two to four.
1994
The first official bottling is a 10 year old.
1999
The maltings is decommissioned.
2001
Pernod Ricard takes over Chivas Brothers.
2002
The distillery is mothballed in October.
2004
A South African group, Intra Trading, buys Benriach together with the former Director at Burn Stewart, Billy Walker. The price is £5.4 million which also includes 5,000 casks aged between 3-34 years.
2005
Four different vintages are released in limited editions - 1966, 1970, 1978 och 1984.
2006
Sixteen new releases, among them a 25 year old, a 30 year old and 8 different vintages.
2007
A 40 year old and three new heavily peated expressions are released.
2008
New expressions include a peated Madeira finish, a 15 year old Sauternes finish and nine single casks. Benriach Distillery Co buys Glendronach distillery from Chivas Brothers.
Reproduced from the Malt Whisky Yearbook 2009 with the kind permission of Mr Ingvar Ronde