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The Whisky Trails
 Foreword
 Introduction
 History of Whisky
 Production of Whisky
 Styles of whisky
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The Trails
1: North Highlands
2: North-East Coast
3: East Highlands
4: Speyside &
    Glenlivet
 4a Around Elgin
 4b Around Rothes
 4c Around Dufftown
 4d Around Aberlour
 4e Around Keith
 4f Around Tomintoul
5: Central &
    Southern Highlands
6: West Coast & Islands
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Tormore Distillery
Picture: Tormore
Click to see large map in separate window   Location: Advie, Grantown-on-Spey, Morayshire PH26 3LR
Roads: On A95 between Grantown and Bridge of Avon
Hours: Visits by appointment only
No reception centre or shop
Phone: 01807-510244

As you turn a bend on the A95 on Speyside Tormore suddenly looms large before you. It is solidly built in light-coloured granite but the details – great arched windows, stone balustrading, fine strip-fenestration on the roof-ridge – lend the distillery considerable style and originality. When it was completed in 1960, the first new distillery in Scotland this century, it created a whole new community with its clutch of pretty tied cottages laid out behind.

Picture: Checking water at Tormore
Even in a modern distillery, timehonoured methods of testing the water have to be followed

The architect was Sir Albert Richardson, a past president of the Royal Academy, who succeeded in creating a main building that was different from the classic Highland distillery but which equally avoided the visual curse of the concrete and glass boxes to which remodelled distilleries were starting to be reduced. Sir Albert included a small curling pond in the layout and he tried to mask the mandatory tall chimney by rendering it as a giant whisky bottle, but there were problems in constructing it and the idea was abandoned.

There are four pairs of stills, each with a purifier to lighten the spirit. The malt used to make Tormore is lightly peated and the whisky is matured principally in ex-Bourbon casks.

A time-capsule in the shape of a pot-still was buried in the forecourt of the distillery, the intention being to open it in the year 2060. It contains assorted data about whisky and Scotland for future industrial archaeologists including a history of the clans, the names of the Tormore staff in 1960 and samples of barley, local water, peat and cask staves. The excavators should have some glasses handy too since there is a tregnum of Long John, the owners’ blended whisky brand, for them to sample.


The Whisky

Picture: Tormore Distillery, the Whisky
Tormore has finesse and a certain, straight nobility to its personality. It is subtle, nutty and has a light, but velvety, texture. It understates all the way yet stays on well at the end. Long John bottle it at 10 years and 40/43% vol. and independent versions are scarce. Not surprisingly Tormore is used in the Long John Blends.

Source of water
Achvochkie Burn
 
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Text Copyright © Gordon Brown 1993
Used by UISGE! with permission by the publisher and the copyright owner.