Few established distilleries in Scotland have undergone such radical transformation in the past few years as Tullibardine, at Blackford just off the A9.
Since 2013, its owners, the French family firm of Picard, have spent millions installing new warehousing and storage, a blending plant with 10 gleaming steel vats and a bottling, packaging and dispatching line. Two of the distillery’s four stills have been renewed so far, with further upgrades planned in 2018 to the whole complex.
The big mashtun gulps six tons of grist every six hours, the worts then ferment with cake yeast for around 60 hours in nine steel washbacks that in turn feed two wash and two spirit stills. Output is currently three million lpa (litres per annum), working 24/7 for 44 weeks a year.
Michel Picard, a wine grower and merchant near Beaune in Burgundy since the 1940s, expanded into pastis and eaux-de-vie over the years and, with Scotch whisky a big seller in France, acquired the blends Highland Queen and Muirhead in 2008 from Glenmorangie and Tullibardine three years later.
Named after a long-gone 19th Century farm distillery at Tullibardine village north-east of Blackford, it was built by C. Delme Evans in 1948-9 on a former brewery site, which famously brewed the beer for the 1488 coronation at Scone of King James IV. Over the years the distillery had several owners, including Brodie Hepburn and Whyte and Mackay, before Picard acquired it in 2011.
In 2013, the Eaglesgate shopping centre, beside the distillery, was vacated and Picard acquired the entire site, converting two former shops to warehousing and the big Baxters of Fochabers shop and restaurant into the blending and bottling plant. A separate antique furniture store became a cooperage with its own on-site cooper.
Hence Tullibardine is one of the most integrated set-ups in the industry, with every operation (milling, mashing, distilling, casking, bonded warehousing, coopering, blending and bottling) on one site. Malting is done off-site, with artics daily unloading 30 tons of malt into the receiving hoppers. Draff is hoisted by auger into high-sided trailers and pot ale is tankered away for disposal.
The vast visitor centre offers three whisky lines — Tullibardine single malts, plus Highland Queen and Muirhead blends and malts. More about them next week.
