Benromach Distillery, Forres: Old-Fashioned Craft in Miniature

Overview

Benromach, near Forres at the northern edge of Speyside, is one of the region’s smallest working distilleries and proudly old-fashioned. Run by hand by a tiny team, it makes a lightly-peated, richly-textured malt in a deliberately traditional style — a taste of what Speyside whisky was like before the industry modernised.

The history

Benromach was founded in 1898, during the great Victorian whisky boom, but had a chequered, stop-start life and was mothballed in 1983. Its saviour was the famous Elgin whisky merchant and independent bottler Gordon & MacPhail, who bought the derelict distillery in 1993, rebuilt it by hand, and reopened it in 1998 — a rare case of a whisky retailer becoming a distiller. They rebuilt it small and traditional on purpose, and it remains family-owned.

The water & the land

Benromach is made with soft water from the Chapelton Spring, rising in the Romach Hills a couple of miles behind the distillery near Forres — naturally-filtered hill water that suits its gently-peated, old-style spirit.

Benromach has the weakest clan story of the Speysiders, and we won’t invent one: it was a straightforward 1898 commercial build in the lowland farmland around Forres, with no clan seat attached. What it has instead is a genuine family story — the Urquhart family, through Gordon & MacPhail, who rescued and still run it.

How it’s made

Benromach is deliberately small and hands-on: one wash still of 7,500 litres and one spirit still of 5,000 litres, a 1.5-tonne stainless-steel mash tun and thirteen larch washbacks of 11,000 litres each, producing about 400,000 litres a year. Gordon & MacPhail bought the derelict site in 1993, restored it from 1997 and had it reopened in 1998 by the then Prince of Wales, with the first bottlings following in 2004. The range runs from the 10-year-old up to 25 years, with a Peat Smoke bottling and a certified-organic edition; the distillery’s own site currently lists the 12-year-old at £45, the 15-year-old at £80 and the 21-year-old at £150, and is teasing “a new age of Benromach” for 22 October 2026.

Visiting

Benromach runs intimate small-group tours (typically a maximum of about eight people), which should be booked around 48 hours ahead — its size makes for an unusually personal visit. It generally opens Monday to Saturday, 9:30 to 5, closed Sundays; check the website.

Nearby & more whisky

• Another Moray distillery, a few miles east: Glenburgie — the heart of Ballantine’s, production only.
• Out on the coast at Burghead: Roseisle — Diageo’s £40 million modern giant, production only.
• On the way to Elgin: Miltonduff, then Glen Moray and BenRiach, which both welcome visitors.
• More Speyside craft: Glen Grant.
• Planning a day of it? Our Speyside Whisky Trail covers this as one of its spurs — the high glens, the smuggling country and the Moray coast.
• The whole picture: Scotch whisky — regions, distilleries & the oldest of all
• Near Cawdor: Royal Brackla, “the King’s Own Whisky”

Sources

• Benromach distillery — Wikipedia.
• Benromach / Gordon & MacPhail.