This year Abertay University proposed a student trip to the Glenturret Distillery. The trip costs £19 per person and it includes the bus, the visit of the distillery and a tasting session. You can also take a picture of the World’s largest Whisky bottle!
The World’s largest Whisky bottle !
The Glenturret Distillery is located on the banks of the Turret River in Crieff. It was established in 1775 by John and Hugh Drummond and was originally called Hosh. At that time it was a single malt distillery, and it was the first to use the pure waters of Turret Burn. It adopts the name of Glenturret in 1875.
Since 1993, the distillery belongs to Highlands Distillers which was bought by Edrington Group in 1999. Neil Cameron is the distillery Manager since 1997.
The Glenturret Distillery with its 240 years of experience is the Scotland’s oldest distillery.
It’s the most visited whisky distillery with 80 000 visitors each year.
Glenturret Distillery
The 5 steps of the fabrication of the whisky:
At Glenturret Distillery, the whisky is still made by hand, it’s the only Scottish distillery where traditional methods of whisky production are still used.
- The Milling
The Glenturret Distillery buys its malt at the company Simpsons Malt and take its pure water in the Loch Turret not far from the distillery.
The malt is ground in the grist mill until it resembles coarse flour.
- The Mashing
The mashing is done by hand, in a hand-operated mash tun, with a wooden rouser. The Glenturret hand-operated mash tun is the last remaining in Scotland.
This method enables a better control of the mash which enables to have more sugars and so more alcohol.
- The Fermentation
For the fermentation, the Glenturret Distillery uses wash backs made from wood.
The distillery have a long fermentation time of up 100 hours which enables to have particular fruity characteristics.
- The Distillation
For the distillation, the Glenturret Distillery uses traditional copper stills.
The particularity of the Glenturret distillation processs is that they run their stills very slowly which it allows to make spirit sweeter and lighter.
- The Casks
To finish, the Glenturret distillery adds some water from Loch Turret to reduce the strength of the new make spirit, and the spirit is put into oak casks. The casks are stocked in warehouses and are left undisturbed until the whisky is matured as they wish.
About 70% of the production sold is single malt, the rest is Glenturret, Malt Liqueur, Fairlie Liqueur and Famous Grouse.
