Roseisle Distillery

Any distillery can make more than one style of whisky – and many do [Bruichladdich, Springbank]. Diageo’s Roseisle however was, with Aisla Bay, part of a new wave which have been specifically designed to produce a range of different characters of spirit.

Roseisle was mired in controversy even before the first sod was cut to start construction. The largest distiller building a large distillery signalled some doom-mongers to predict that parent firm Diageo would use Roseisle’s opening as an excuse to close down some of its smaller sites. It soon became the equivalent of a whisky Death Star. In reality its size, at 10m litres per annum, was smaller than Glenfiddich, and its construction was merely the first stage in a £1bn investment by Diageo in increasing capacity across its estate. Rather than closing anything down, Roseisle ushered in a new era of distillery building. A biomass plant means it generates much of its own energy, while a heat recovery system allows waste heat from the distillery to help run the maltings at nearby Burghead and across the road at Roseisle.