Tomintoul (pronounced ‘tom-in-TOWEL’) was built in 1964, under the ownership of Hay & Macleod and W & S Strong, in the village of the same name, which itself is one of Scotland’s highest, at an altitude of 345m (1132 feet). Drawing its water from the Ballantruan Spring, the whisky distillery sits in rugged terrain; jagged undulations surround and are specked with many a wooded clump.
It is said the purity of the spring and the clean air at such an altitude contribute to the smooth, easy-drinking single malt of Tomintoul; indeed, they market their Scotch as ‘the easy drinking dram’. The distillery is rather large with a capacity of 3.3 million litres per annum. Tomintoul runs at maximum capacity, with a seven day working week and boasts a healthy storage capacity; its four warehouses can hold 75,000 casks. In 1974, the first official bottling was launched in the form of Tomintoul twelve year-old.
Two weeks a year, a heavily peated malt with 55ppm is used for mashing, for the peated bottlings in Tomintoul’s range. Currently under Angus Dundee ownership, Tomintoul whisky distillery was acquired from Whyte and Mackay in 2000. It would seem Tomintoul has come of age of late with a surge of recent releases, including the 1976 vintage, bottled in 2008.