Loch Lomond whiskies

Loch Lomond is one of Scotland’s most famous and beautiful landmarks and delineates the boundary between the Lowlands and Highlands. The area’s been at the heart of the whisky industry for centuries and at least nine distilleries around the Loch have come and gone over the years, leaving Loch Lomond Distillery to carry the flag into the 21st century… and what a stellar job it’s doing!

The distillery was established in 1963 by one of the great innovators of the industry, an American called Duncan Thomas, whose leftfield thinking laid the foundation for Loch Lomond to become the most flexible and innovative distillery in Scotland.

Inspired by the 1960s whisky boom, Thomas established Loch Lomond in partnership with Chicago-based Barton Brands and set about producing malt whisky on state-of-the-art long neck pot stills, or Lomond stills, named after the Lomond brand of whisky made on a similar still at nearby Inverleven Distillery (more on these stills soon). Whisky was booming so Barton bought him out in 1971, but sold the distillery to Inver House (Old Pulteney, Balblair, anCnoc) in 1985 when things slowed down again. They, in turn, flipped it to Glen Catrine Bonded Warehouse Ltd in 1986 and the rest, as they say, is history.

In purchasing Loch Lomond, Glen Catrine had the means to heavily exploit the private label and bulk whisky market; an unglamorous but highly lucrative business that no one else was doing quite as well as they were. Over the next three decades they rapidly built up the distillery’s infrastructure to flexibly produce a wide variety of whisky styles including traditional peated and unpeated single malt, peated and unpeated single malt from Lomond stills, single grain and blended whisky. In addition to producing for the private and bulk market, the company also bottled and marketed whisky under their own labels including Loch Lomond, Inchmurrin, Inchmoan, Glengarry, Clansman and High Commissioner. While their blends did very well, the malts never really got the attention they deserved and aside from a small annual output of original bottlings, Loch Lomond’s single malts were mainly the preserve of independent bottlers.

The world’s currently experiencing a whisky boom like no other. And in 2014 the distillery was acquired by a private team of industry heavyweights including former Diageo CFOs Nick Rose and Richard Miles, along with Colin Matthews, who led Imperial Tobacco’s businesses in Africa, the Middle East and the Indian sub-continent. The new guys mean business and since taking over, have implemented a major overhaul of the distillery’s range including rebranding and repackaging, and most importantly for whisky lovers around the world, a very strong focus on malt whisky. Loch Lomond’s superb single malts are finally getting their turn in the sun!