Due to their need to expand, Speyside Distillery has become Scotland’s next lost distillery in 2025, as announced by John Harvey McDonough during the Spirit of Speyside Festival’s Launch event this week. The company will be moving to a new home at Strathmashie by Laggan once it has been built, with its whisky stocks going into storage for further maturation and future sales on allocation.
“The whisky from Speyside Distillery is now from a lost distillery. There will never be another Speyside Distillery under the current Scotch Whisky Association rules,” Mr McDonough explained.
“Our SPEY brand continues globally but it is now from a lost distillery.”
Since 2012, Speyside Distillers Company Ltd has been under the ownership of Harvey’s of Edinburgh. John Harvey McDonough is the Group CEO and his family has links back to John and Robert Harvey established in 1770.
A small and beautiful distillery nestled amongst the beautiful Cairngorm Mountains, the Speyside distillery may look surprisingly familiar to many, as it featured (as Lagganmore distillery) in the popular BBC series “Monarch Of The Glen”.
The most southerly in the Speyside region, and closest to the source of the River Spey, the distillery has been producing spirit since 1990, and has been producing the “SPEY from Speyside Distillery” range of single malts.
The term ‘Lost distillery’ is applied to distilleries closed due to either economic factors, other pressures, or on rarer occasions, due to insurmountable technical problems such as water issues.
Industry expert and noted whisky author Brian Townsend is an authority on Lost Distilleries and has written a book on this subject: “Scotch Missed – The Lost Distilleries of Scotland”.
Brian Townsend has stated that “Speyside Distillers Company will relocate in 2025 to a newly acquired Highland Estate and will operate under a different distillery name.
“Consequently all the whisky produced at Speyside Distillery up to 2025 will be classed as whisky-distillate from a lost distillery after 2025.” Brian Townsend
“In the current Scotch Whisky industry this position is quite unique. It makes whisky from Speyside Distillery – a soon to be lost distillery – extremely rare.”
The immediate impact is that based on growing demand and lack of production until their new distillery is up and running, Speyside Distillers will now be allocating whisky supplies in order to allow key customers to enjoy continued supply of SPEY whisky from Speyside Distillery.
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