Port Ellen is up and running again
The Port Ellen Distillery, perhaps the greatest legend in the Scottish distilling industry, just started up again today, after a 41-year shutdown.
As was announced a few moments ago, the Port Ellen distillery, located in the village of the same name on the south coast of the island of Islay, is working again. Thus, the number of active malt whisky factories on this island, famous for its smoky, peaty whisky, has risen to ten.
The Diageo conglomerate, owner of this and dozens of other distilleries in Scotland, announced in 2017 a huge plan to invest in Scotch whisky. Expenditures were planned at £18 million, although it is not hard to guess that realities, including inflation, verified these plans and far more was ultimately spent.
As part of the overall investment package, the restoration of two legendary distilleries - Brora in the northern Highlands and Port Ellen on Islay - is planned. Bora was launched in May 2021, but as it turned out, the relaunch of Port Ellen slipped quite a bit from the original plans.
The Port Ellen distillery was closed as a result of the biggest overproduction crisis in Scotch whisky history, as the industry was hit in the early 1980s. In the 1970s. Working almost exclusively for blends at the time, distilleries were closed according to an economic key, not according to the suitability or quality of the distillate produced. On Islay, as many as three distilleries (Lagavulin, Caol Ila and Port Ellen) belonged to the same owner, all producing the island's distinctive, strongly peaty whisky, so one had to be liquidated. The choice fell on Port Ellen, and one of the most important arguments was the fact that a powerful industrial malting plant existed and operated within the same plant. This part has not been closed, on the contrary - to prevent excessive job losses, local distillers have agreed that from now on they will all source their barley malt just in Port Ellen. It did, and the condition has largely survived to this day. With few exceptions.
While in the case of Brora it was limited to a meticulous restoration of the plant, which closed in 1983 and was in ruins, Port Ellen went a step further. Yes, the two alembics that operated here at the time of the plant's closure have been carefully recreated, plus all the equipment necessary for their operation, including all the vats and tanks. However, in addition to this, two slightly smaller tempering apparatuses have been installed at the distillery, and it is the intention of the owners to use them to conduct various experiments related to tempering whisky.
The new alembics also received a new building - a modern, all-glass building that offers both views of the bay and the Oa Peninsula from inside and allows one to look at the distillery's operations from the outside. The Visitor Centre will not be up and running and receive its first tourists until June this year.
In the current offer of the House of Whisky Online you can find a fairly extensive range of collector's editions of Port Ellen, bottled from stocks matured in Diageo warehouses since the distillery closed, and in many cases much longer. We invite you to visit.
[19.03.2024 / photo: Diageo]