Rosebank has launched
Projects to reactivate defunct distilleries, which we were so excited about when they were announced a few years ago, are gradually taking the form of operating plants. After the relaunch of Brora in May 2021, significant delays due to the pandemic, the time has come for Rosebank.
The date of July 18, 2023 will go down in the history of this often-underrated whiskey maker as the day when the first barrel was filled after more than 30 years of downtime. Barrel number 001 has just gone into storage and the long maturation process has begun. The barrel in question is a bourbon refill, or 200 liters of distillate, which in time will become Rosebank Single Malt Whisky.
Rosebank is located in Falkirk, in the Lowlands region. Plans for its relaunch were revealed in 2017. At that time, Ian Macleod Distillers bought the defunct plant from Diageo and proceeded to prepare detailed plans to reactivate the distillery. Work began in 2019, but due to the situation with the Covid-19 pandemic, all plans had to change and deadlines postponed.
Original production space plans and alembic drawings recovered. This allowed the distillery's equipment to be accurately reproduced, including the installation of three alembics for the traditional three-fold distillation in the Lowlands, and coil condensers, so that the light spirit leaving the distillation apparatuses receives a little more body, gains weight.
As one of the distilleries in the Lowlands, Rosebank has benefited from special tax laws favoring whisky production in the region since its inception. Therefore, its original owners did not have to wait until the passage of the Excise Act of 1823, and were able to legalize their business as early as 1817.
The distillery became part of Distillers Company Limited in 1925 and remained in the hands of the same owner - transforming over time into United Distillers, and finally Diageo - until it closed in 1993 and was sold to Ian Macleod Distillers in 2017. It is said that when the decision was made to close it, it was a serious candidate to join the now historic Classic Malts of Scotland, promoted at the time by United Distillers (later Diageo). A factor that condemned Rosebank to many years of obscurity was the deplorable state of the then-closed Forth and Clyde Canal, on which the distillery is located, and the resulting low tourist appeal. At that time, Glenkinchie won. Today, the situation in Falkirk is quite different - the Forth and Clyde Canal is once again bustling with activity, and the area is attracting crowds of tourists thanks to a huge number of attractions. The famous Kelpies, the remarkable Falkirk Wheel lock, Linlithgow Palace, or the nearby town of Stirling with its monumental castle, the William Wallace monument, or the Bannockburn battlefield, and finally its direct proximity to Edinburgh and Glasgow - all of these make the plans to open the Rosebank Visitor Center next year and receive some 50,000 visitors a year seem realistic, if not underestimated. Scotland has been experiencing a period of tremendous interest among tourists from all over the world for at least a decade, and the Scottish distilling industry is slowly being transformed, as the mischievous say, into a distillery and tourism industry.
In the current offer of the House of Whisky Online you can find more than a dozen editions of whisky from Rosebank, bottled during the period when the distillery was not open, including rare and collectible bottles from its current owner, Ian Macleod Distillers (information current at the time of preparing the material). We invite you to visit.
[19.07.2023 / photo: Ian Macleod Distillers]