The Singleton has its Visitor Centre
As part of a massive £185 million investment program in the tourism sector, Diageo has opened another attraction at one of its distilleries. Initially there was only talk of upgrading the Visitor Centres at Glenkinchie, Caol Ila, Cardhu and Clynelish distilleries and building a new tourist attraction in Edinburgh city center, The Johnnie Walker Experience. We now learn that the Talisker and Glen Ord distilleries have also been included in the program for wider release.
The latter is one of three whisky producers sold since 2006 under the co-brand The Singleton. The new Visitor Center offers visitors several options for touring the distillery - from a 90-minute introduction to the distillery and the production process to more advanced options, including ones that also involve food pairing and tasting a wider range of whiskeys. An elegant bar has also been launched, whisky tasting rooms have been prepared, as well as an offer of various delicacies, to be tasted both with and without whisky. A store has also been launched, offering a number of whisky editions from Diageo-owned distilleries, most notably exclusive editions available only locally.
As it seems, a special place to celebrate The Singleton brand has been needed for some time, with the growing popularity of the brand. The Glen Ord distillery and its location on the hugely popular North Coast 500 route, best positions it to be the tourist brand ambassador of all three distilleries. The other two, Glendullan and Dufftown, are located in the town of Dufftown, where a whole range of whiskey-related tourist attractions are already in operation - both in the town itself and within a radius of a few to several kilometers - including mainly distilleries. Another one could literally get lost in the crowd and not achieve the expected success. Meanwhile, the NC500 route sees more than one million visits to the website each year, and most importantly, it sees tens if not hundreds of thousands of tourists traversing Scotland along the coast and looking for attractions along the route, including those related to Scotland's distilling industry. The launch of a fully professional, interesting Visitor Centre in Glen Ord is to fill a niche in this area around Inverness, for many representing the start of the NC500 adventure.
To celebrate the relaunch of the Visitor Centre in Glen Ord, a special edition whisky has also been prepared, The Singleton of Glen Ord Celebratory Bottling. It is a whisky with no age determination, bottled as a cask strength (51.8%), available exclusively from the distillery at £195 per bottle.
The Singleton brand was launched in 2006 with Singleton of Dufftown in Europe and Singleton of Glen Ord in Asian markets. A year later, Singleton of Glendullan debuted in the United States. This regional division was maintained more or less until 2015, when Diageo decided to loosen its rules a bit, and products from all three distilleries began to appear in regions previously reserved for only one of them, and primarily in the chain's travel retail stores. Today, more than 6 million bottles of Singleton whisky are sold worldwide each year, and the Glen Ord distillery, after its latest expansion in 2015, has reached a capacity of 11 million liters of pure alcohol per year, making it one of the largest malt whisky plants in Scotland. The combined production potential of all three distilleries under the Singleton brand is 22 million liters per year.
Vacation season in full swing, for many that means a trip to Scotland. It is worth remembering that a dozen miles from Inverness, a little to the northwest, there is a new tourist attraction prepared especially for lovers of Scotch whisky. There are more on the NC500 route - Glenmorangie, Balblair, Dalmore, Pulteney, Wolfburn distilleries - but it seems that Glen Ord's offerings will, at least for a while, be the most interesting whisky-related point on this highly scenic and attraction-filled route.
The current offerings of the House of Whisky Online include quite a few a rich set of whiskeys from under the Singleton brand, and from all three distilleries that make up the brand. We invite you to visit and look for something for yourself - whether it's for an evening sipping on a good movie, or for a collection of. With us you can find something for every occasion. And for every budget.
[11.07.2022 / photo: Diageo]