UNSUNG HERO
Ardmore
When it comes to selecting the location for a whisky distillery, a reliable source of pure water is usually top of the list. But during the Victorian era another factor was almost equally important – the proximity of a railway line to the site in question. Gavin D Smith reports on Ardmore, the unsung hero of peated Highland whisky
PHOTOS: PETER SANDGROUND
PICTURED: Ardmore is one of a number of distilleries built to take advantage of the Aberdeen to Inverness railway line
ABOVE: Ardmore was built in 1898 by Adam Teacher, son of the Glasgow blender William Teacher, although Adam himself died in 1898
North-east Scotland was particularly favoured for new distilleries as the rail network developed there during the second half of the 19th century, and of particular significance was the construction of the Aberdeen to Inverness railway line between 1854 and 1858.
A number of distilleries were built close to the line in order to allow the import of coal, coke, barley and barrels and the export of casks of whisky, including last month’s subject in this series, Glentauchers. Just as Glentauchers was coming on stream in 1898, so to was another distillery, at Kennethmont, some eight miles south of the Aberdeenshire market town of Huntly. The new distillery was named Ardmore and was owned by William Teacher & Sons Ltd.
Glasgow merchant and publican William Teacher had developed his own blended Scotches from the 1860s, and following his death in 1876, sons William Junior and Adam continued to expand the company’s activities. Particular success came in the arena of exports from around 1878, initially to New Zealand, then Norway, Italy, The West Indies, Australia and Thailand.
In 1884 Teacher’s Highland Cream was registered, and its rich, peaty style was very much in the spirit of earlier blends created by William Teacher himself. To provide a guaranteed supply of quality malt spirit for use in the blend and for reciprocal trading, William and Adam Teacher followed the lead of many of their blending compatriots who had also become distillers, and established Ardmore.
The site chosen was on an estate owned by Colonel Leith-Hay, a friend of the Teacher family, and it possessed the requisite water supply – from springs on Knockandy Hill – and locally available barley and peat, along with the aforementioned neighbouring railway line. In 1895, the Teachers acquired the land required to build their distillery, located at 600 feet above sea level, the highest point of the Aberdeen-Inverness railway line.
Adam Teacher died in 1898, never seeing the distillery he had planned in operation, and the great Victorian blended whisky boom turned to bust just a couple of years later. Teachers and Ardmore survived through the lean times that followed, however, and the post-Second World War thirst for Scotch whisky, particularly in the United States, led to the capacity of Ardmore being doubled with the installation of a second pair of stills during 1955.
Ardmore’s complement of stills was increased to eight in 1974, as two years previously, UK sales alone of the Highland Cream blend had exceeded one million cases for the first time.
ABOVE: This aerial view shows the distillery’s layout and proximity to the railway line in Aberdeenshire
ABOVE: History and heritage are to the forefront everywhere you look at Ardmore
Such success made the company ripe for a takeover, and a number of large brewing concerns were buying into the whisky business around this time. Allied Breweries duly acquired William Teacher & Sons Ltd during 1976, removing from family ownership the largest independent Scotch whisky company still controlled by descendants of the founder.
Ardmore continued to fire its stills with coal until 2001, being the second-last Scottish distillery to do so, with only nearby GlenDronach persisting with direct firing for another four years before also switching to steam.
According to scotchwhisky.com: “The peatiness of Ardmore (it comes across as woodsmoke) is balanced by a gentle apple/floral lift, the product of a regime which insists on clear wort and very long fermentation in wooden washbacks. The fires which once raged under the stills added a heavy, mid-palate weight, as did the downward facing lyne arms.
“When the fires came out, the distillery team spent seven months creating new steam coils with kinks in them to replicate the ‘hot spots’ in the stills which had contributed this flavour.”
Along with Laphroaig, Ardmore was acquired in 2005 by Jim Beam Brands as part of the break-up of Allied Domecq plc, successor company to Allied Breweries, and in 2014 the Japanese distilling giant Suntory took over Beam for $16bn. The resulting operation was named Beam Suntory until being rebranded as Suntory Global Spirits in May 2024. As part of Suntory Global Spirits, Ardmore’s Scottish stablemates are Auchentoshan, Bowmore, Glen Garioch and Laphroaig distilleries.
Ardmore remains the only Highland distillery that has been producing peated malt spirit since its inception, with peating levels of 12-14ppm. It is equipped with a cast-iron semi-lauter mashtun, complete with copper top, and 12.5 tonnes mashes are processed.
In total, there are 16 Douglas Fir washbacks at Ardmore, six with capacities of 90,000 litres and 10 with capacities of 45,000 litres. Two of the larger vessels were installed during 2022 to allow the same 70-hour fermentation time for both Ardmore and unpeated Ardlair spirit. Ardlair is named after a local stone circle and is traded for blending, as well as comprising 20 per cent of the core NAS Ardmore Legacy expression, where it has the effect of softening the peatiness of relatively youthful whisky.
ABOVE: Sitting in the shadow of Knockandy Hill, the distillery is fed by 16 springs
ABOVE: The distillery has a display of archive ledgers, including a record of the first ever mash as well as payments for barley and wages
Unusually, Ardmore’s eight onion-shaped stills are positioned in a row, and the four wash stills and four spirit stills each hold charges of 15,000 litres. The relatively short wide necks on stills with descending lyne arms help to give the spirit body.
When working a seven-day week, the distillery operates 23 mashes per week and can produce up to 5.5m litres per annum if working at full capacity.
Sadly, for traditionalists, Teacher’s Highland Cream has gone from being the second-best-selling blend in the UK during the late-1980s, with 150 export markets to its credit, to a shadow of its former self, retailing just 1.4m cases globally in 2023. Today, the brand’s leading markets are India and Brazil.
As for Ardmore, it may be low in profile as a single malt, but it is certainly high in character, particularly when allowed to get a few years’ maturity under its softly peaty belt.
Society members are fortunate to see regular single cask releases from Distillery 66 – check here for availability in the UK, or your local branch website