Ailsa Bay officially opened

Although it’s been in production for a while, since September 2007, it’s now had it’s official opening. Doing the honours was the UK’s own Prince of Whisky, Charles the Prince of Wales. After the official opening Charles filled one of the four casks that will be put aside for later bottling for the Prince’s Trust. So there will be a chance to get a hold of a bottle of malt from this distillery in some years.

Alisa Bay is owned by Wm. Grant & Sons and is located inside the comapy’s Girvan complex, where Ladyburn also was in operation between 1966 and 1975. The distillery took only 9 months to build and started production without so much as a mention. The distillery has steinless steel fermenters and four pairs of stills, based on the design of the stills at Balvenie. The whisky is, as with the company’s Kininvie Distillery in Dufftown, destined purely for blends. The aim is to produce a spirit in style with Balvenie.

This also brings the total of active Lowland distilleries up to a total of five: Glenkinchie, Auchentoshan, Bladnoch, Daftmill and now Ailsa Bay.

New Lowland distillery

Glen Turner Distillery, a subsidiary of one of the biggest spirit producers on the French market (COFEPP/La Martiniquaise), are expandig into production. The site, which was set up in 2004, has until now been used to mature, blend and bottle whisky (Glen Turner, Label 5 and Sir Edwards for the French market.