The Dufftown distillery
The Dufftown whisky distillery was built in 1895 by wine merchant Peter Mackenzie, John Symon, Richard Stackpole and Charles MacPherson. Production began a year later. The Dufftown distillery sits not far from its namesake town and not far from where the Rivers Dullan and Fiddich conjoin in liquid matrimony. In the Conval Hills, Jock’s Well rises and from here Dufftown draws its cooling waters.
The distillery was bought from the original owners in 1933 by Arthur Bell and Sons for the sum of £56,000. Following Guinness’ acquisition of Arthur Bell and Sons and the subsequent merger between Guinness and Grand Metropolitan, Deanston is at present under Diageo ownership. Since two extra stills were added in 1979, the whisky distillery houses a total of eight stills.
Present day
Currently, Dufftown is the largest producer of all Diageo’s whisky distilleries; Dufftown has a capacity of some 4.12million litres and as much as 98% of this is used in blends, notably, Johnnie Walker, Dewar’s and in Bells, of which it is the largest single constituent malt whisky. There has been but one official house bottling, a Flora and Fauna 15 year-old. However, there has been a twelve year-old, launched for the duty free market and named ‘The Singleton of Dufftown’. There have been but a handful of independent bottlings.