Drinking to Dufftown

First Society bottling in 1991 - The delight of Dufftown distillery is in the ingenuity by which successive changes to increase capacity have largely been accommodated within the original mill walls.

Certainly Gordon Brown should be. The town's handouts claim that Dufftown probably exports more goods by value, and therefore raises more capital by head of population, than any other place in Britain. The clue is in the local rhyme:

Rome was built on seven hills,

Dufftown was built on seven stills.

The three of these owned by United Distillers and Vintners Ltd., Glendullan, Mortlach and Dufftown, hand over £180 million in revenue per year.

Dufftown is a clean, austere Highland town twenty or so miles south of Elgin. It was founded in 1817 by James Duff, 4th Earl of Fife, to provide local employment after the Napoleonic Wars. The streets are laid out in the form of a cross converging on the main architectural feature, the clock tower. The clock has a singular claim to fame as the 'clock that hanged MacPherson', Singers of the 'Rant' come, gawk and greet intae their drams.

Down from the town and along the bank of the Dullan is the Dufftown Distillery. Close by is the mothballed Pittyvaich Distillery and downstream is the Mortlach. By custom and habit, the whisky is called Dufftown-Glenlivet, an addendum legally acquired in its early years as a marketing ploy, although the glen of the Livet is in fact on the other side of the twin summits of Ben Rinnes, and the whisky no longer needs the epithet.

The popularity of Speyside whisky in the 1890's drew two Liverpudlians, Peter Mackenzie and Richard Stackpole, to Dufftown. With John Symon and a local solicitor, they converted Symon's sawmill and mealmill into a distillery. On the hill above, Symon also owned the farm which supplied the barley for the first distillation in November 1896. The water for distillation came from Highlandman John's Well, or Jock's Well, which rises in the Conval hills four miles away. Nowadays it is piped to the distillery but in those days it would be carried by water-courses. Since the already-established Mortlach used the same source, there were nights when the water could be diverted and rediverted by the rival distillery workers. Even although both distilleries are now owned by the same company, discussions about the distribution can still be delicate.

Dufftown-Glenlivet was a successful distillery and when Mackenzie, in 1898, went on to set up a blending company in Edinburgh, he developed a rising market for the product in America. Prohibition in the U.S.A. was therefore a damaging blow and by 1933 Arthur K. Bell was able to purchase the total business, including the Dufftown and Blair-Athol distilleries, and 120,000 proof gallons of fine malt, for just £56,000. Bells, who have continued to value Dufftown for blending, merged with Scottish Malt Distillers in 1985 to become United Distillers; and after their acrimonious absorption into the Guinness empire, were turned by yet another merger with Grand Metropolitan in 1998 into United Distillers and Vintners Ltd. By the 1970's, after a major expansion in 1968 which doubled the stills to four, Dufftown-Glenlivet was producing 3 million litres of alcohol each year. Now, after another expansion in 1979 added a further two stills, a new mash tun and new malt mill, capacity is 4 million litres.

This is all the more surprising when you approach the distillery for the first time. It appears to have been squeezed into a narrow defile between the fast-flowing, rowdy Dullan and the steep bank on top of which is Pittyvaich farm. The Pagoda is lost to sight behind the rough stone gable of the original mill and only the signposts confirm you are in the right place.

The delight of Dufftown distillery is in the ingenuity by which successive changes to increase capacity have largely been accommodated within the original mill walls. The redesign of 1968 was made possible by the closure of the maltings and a small extension at the back to create space for the additional stills. Now six pear-shaped stills absolutely fill the still-house: the space between the two oldest stills is so small that the visitor has to put one leg through at a time. The stillman has to descend a few steps under a gantry to reach the spirit safe. In the magnificently refurbished malt barn are the twelve stainless-steel washbacks, now filled and emptied from the bottom to reduce clutter at the access. The mash-tun is adjacent to the stills and the mill is now directly under the Pagoda. Everywhere you turn, huge items of equipment, such as the water and caustic soda heating system for cleansing of the mash-tun and washbacks, have been expeditiously tucked away. And most prominent are the colossal red iron and steel bulwarks and beams which have replaced retaining walls to create workable spaces.

There is no room for sentimentality here. The mill's waterwheel, which even until the late 60's drove the mash-tun gears using pulleys and belts, is now gone. Three original wooden washbacks gave way to stainless steel in 1998. The distillery is extremely economic: hot water is recycled to serve a variety of other purposes, waste is evaporated and made into syrup or sent to a dark grains plant to be pelletised with the draff for cattlefeed. Even with major refurbishment going on, production is interrupted as little as possible. Dufftown works twenty-four hours a day for five days a week with only nine of a staff. All aspects of the distillation process can be monitored on the computer screens of the tiny control room.

Gordon Donoghue, who manages all three of U.D.V.'s distilleries in Dufftown, has all the approachability and good humour that can be expected of a Glasgow man. He is confident that the Dufftown Distillery has a secure future, evidenced by the £3 million which over the last three years has been poured into refurbishment of the mash house and still house. He reveals that more than 98% of current production goes into the company's blends or to other blenders. The 15-year-old 43% abv single malt produced at Dufftown is therefore something of a rarity (and our 16-year-old cask at 55.3% abv rarer still)!

Challenged about the quality of the malt, he points out that the blenders are not easily satisfied. He puts emphasis on the quality of the raw materials, on consistency, but most of all on careful selection of the casks in which to store the whisky: Why strain everything to get the quality and then fill it into wood with a doubtful history? To testify to the quality of the 15-year-old malt, he brought in John McDonald who has seen the distillery through many of the changes of the last thirty years. Dufftown is John's favourite malt and in his thoughtful and measured way he led us into the decorum of drinking it. John respects the difference between the gutsier Mortlach, where one's enough and you'll be asleep, and the gentler Dufftown of which 'you could hae two or three drams and really enjoy them'. One for sipping all night then? Na, na, beyond three and you'll be losing the taste of the dram and might as well be drinking a blend.. And whereas the heavier whiskies may need a special occasion, the Dufftown can be enjoyed anytime. Under this canny influence, the pale gold of the bottle on the table in front of us was transformed into something worth treasuring, savouring for its own special qualities.

When in the summer I opened my bottle of the Society's Dufftown, the pleasure on the palate will be intensified by the toast I will raise to a real learning experience at the distillery.