THE HISTORY OF THE GLENMORANGIE DISTILLERY

Our knowledge of life at the distillery and the commercial development of Glenmorangie is taken back into the late 19th century by two remarkable sources.

The first was Alice Ross, who died in November 1992 shortly before completion of the final stage of research on this project. She was the younger daughter of George Ross, and at ninety years old possessed an incredibly sharp personal memory which stretched back to the last few years of peace before the outbreak of the First World War, plus knowledge of her father’s own time at the distillery. Their combined experience pushed our knowledge back to 1886, the year before the establishment of the Glenmorangie Distillery Company proper.

The second source, or rather group of sources, is the sequence of distillery records still preserved at Glenmorangie. These commence in 1896 with a wages book and continue with only a few interruptions down to the early 1960’s, charting the mixed fortunes of the distillery through two World Wars and the Great Depression of the 1930’s. Together, they produce a picture of striking vividness and detail:

THE STORY OF GLENMORANGIE MALT WHISKY DISTILLING Introduction Chronology of Distilling The Early Days of Distilling Illicit Whisky Distilling STORIES AROUND THE DISTILLERY Introduction The Ancient Burgh The Immortal Walter Scott The White Lady GLENMORANGIE DISTILLERY Introduction Early Days at Glenmorangie Enmeshed in the local rural framework A comfortable little backwater Maltbarns into makeshift barracks New owners and the Roaring Twenties A return to older ways Progress has some advantages THE HISTORY OF THE AREA Introduction Earliest Times The Dark Ages Ross in the Middle Ages The Wars of Independence The Church of St Duthac at Tain The Reformation/Ross of Morangie

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