STORIES AROUND THE DISTILLERY

The White Lady

Every distillery has its own ghost, but the ghost at the Glenmorangie Distillery is surely the most incorporeal of them all.

Its haunting ground was the malting floor where, traditionally, new apprentices began learning the art of distillation. Even the most skilful and sought-after Stillmaster or Head Cooper will be able to recall his long hours on the malting floor (and the present manager of the Glenmorangie Distillery is no exception).

It was, if truth be told, a tedious job. After steeping the barley in the water from the nearby Tarlogie Springs, the grain was spread out over four large malting floors to begin its artificial germination.

The key to this lengthy process - it took ten to twelve days - was temperature. The sprouting grain had to be thinned or thickened to maintain a temperature of 60 degrees farenheit. Warm, sultry weather was the real danger. Left to itself, the temperature could rise by up to ten degrees in only a few hours. The malt would be ruined.

This was how the apprentices spent much of their time, watching the temperature, turning the malt, on their toes for eight hours at a stretch both day and night.

At Glenmorangie, they also had a further anxiety. On their first day, the manager would take them aside and explain in a kindly and sympathetic manner that during the night-shift they might well encounter the ghost of a lady dressed in white. Nobody knew who she was or how she had come there but her terrifying appearance had - it was said - driven more than one unfortunate to insanity.

The result of this little talk was, of course, that even in the warm and comfortable malting room, no apprentice ever managed to get so much as a wink of sleep. And no malt was ever spoilt.

Nowadays, the malting process is carried out away from the distillery. This one small break with tradition had been necessitated by the soaring demand for Glenmorangie and the subsequent need to increase output. Apprentices now cut their indentures in the cooperage.

Rather curiously, the manager reports that, that is precisely where the White Lady has chosen to move as well.....

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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