Edradour Distillery — Highland Single Malt Whisky

Edradour Distillery is a Scotch whisky distillery located near Pitlochry, in the Highland region of Scotland. It was founded in 1825 and is currently owned by the Signatory Vintage Scotch Whisky Company. Edradour is renowned as one of the smallest distilleries in Scotland and operates the smallest traditional stills in the country, still worked largely by hand in the original farm buildings.

History

Edradour traces its origins to 1825, when a small consortium of local farmers legally registered a distillery on the site, taking advantage of the 1823 Excise Act that made licensed distilling more attractive than illicit stills. The site had earlier operated informally under farm production, and by 1837 James Scott and Duncan Stewart had taken over the lease and given it the name Edradour, derived from the Gaelic for "between two rivers," a reference to its setting near the Edradour Burn. Ownership changed hands several times over the following century: the Mackintosh family sold the distillery to William Whiteley & Co in 1933, and in 1982 it passed to Campbell Distillers, a subsidiary of the French drinks group Pernod Ricard, which used much of its output for blends. In 2002, Andrew Symington, founder of the independent bottler Signatory Vintage, purchased Edradour for around £3.5 million. Under Signatory's ownership the distillery shifted its focus toward small-batch single malt bottlings and expanded cask experimentation, and in 2003 it launched Ballechin, a heavily peated single malt named after a defunct neighbouring distillery. Edradour has long promoted itself as the last of Scotland's traditional farm distilleries still in production, using largely manual, pre-industrial methods.

Quick Facts

• Region: Highland (Perthshire)
• Founded: 1825
• Owner: Signatory Vintage Scotch Whisky Company (since 2002)
• Status: Active
• Stills: 1 wash still (approx. 4,200 litres) and 1 spirit still (approx. 2,200 litres) — among the smallest traditional stills in Scotland

Core Range

Edradour's core range centres on the Edradour 10 Year Old (40% ABV), matured in a combination of bourbon barrels and Oloroso sherry casks and bottled at natural colour. The Caledonia 12 Year Old (46% ABV) is fully matured in Oloroso sherry casks and bottled unchill-filtered. The distillery's peated side is represented by the Ballechin range, led by the Ballechin 10 Year Old (46% ABV), made from barley peated to around 50 ppm and matured predominantly in ex-bourbon casks with a sherry cask finish.