Longmorn

Longmorn has quietly provided a sweet and deeply fruity component to a multiplicity of blends since its founding. Its ferments are long, the distillation takes place in eight thick-necked stills, giving a make which is weighty enough to age well in both ex-Sherry and ex-Bourbon.

Longmorn was built by one of the 19th century’s most interesting whisky entrepreneurs, John Duff. He was born in Aberchirder, worked at GlenDronach, and after designing nearby Glenlossie in 1876, headed to South Africa to try and start a whisky industry there. He failed (as did most, until very recently) and headed to the US to try his hand there. Knocked back once more he returned home and, undeterred, built Longmorn in 1893. Five years after he built another plant next door – Benriach. It was not an ideal time to build two new plants and in 1899 he was forced to sell to James Grant. Although Duff’s business was not sound, his whisky was and by the start of the 20th century Longmorn was a prize malt, used in a variety of blends including VAT 69 and Dewar’s. In 1920, the young Masataka Taketsuru, one of the fathers of Japanese whisky and founder of Nikka, spent a short period working in the distillery. The stills at Nikka’s two distilleries are said to be modelled on Longmorn’s. In 1970, the Grant family and blender Hill Thompson (which had a long relationship with Longmorn) merged with The Glenlivet & Glen Grant Distilleries Ltd to create The Glenlivet Distilleries Ltd. This was bought by Seagram in 1977 and (minus Glen Grant) is now part of Chivas Brothers.