Linkwood Distillery, Elgin: The Delicate Blenders’ Malt

Overview

Linkwood stands on the southern edge of Elgin. Blenders rate it highly, and it is often held up as the textbook delicate, floral Speyside: clean, light, with notes of cut grass, apple and flowers. Most of it goes into Diageo’s blends, including Johnnie Walker. Official single malts are scarce, the best known being the Flora & Fauna 12-year-old.

It is not open to visitors. It is famous in whisky circles for one stubborn manager who refused to let anything change, down to the dents in the stills.

Where it is

Linkwood is about a mile south-east of Elgin town centre, just off the A941 Rothes road. It is the first of a cluster of distilleries on the road south of the city: Glen Elgin, Longmorn and BenRiach are all within a few miles. Glen Moray is on the other side of town by the River Lossie.

The full history

1821: Peter Brown’s distillery

Linkwood was built in 1821 by Peter Brown, factor to the Seafield estates and a noted agricultural improver. It began with two stills and started producing in 1825, at a modest 4,500 litres a year. This was just after the 1823 Excise Act, when landowners across the north-east were turning illicit whisky-making into licensed business.

1872: William Brown rebuilds

After Peter Brown died in 1868, his son William Brown took over. In 1872–73 he pulled the old distillery down and built a new one on the same site, raising capacity to around 227,000 litres and later double that. In 1898 the family formed the Linkwood-Glenlivet Distillery Co. and floated it on the stock exchange. Innes Cameron joined in 1902, became managing director and ran it until he died in 1932. The company then passed to Scottish Malt Distillers, part of the Distillers Company (DCL), forerunner of Diageo.

Roderick Mackenzie and the cobwebs

Linkwood closed from 1941 to 1945 because of wartime barley shortages. When it reopened, the manager was Roderick Mackenzie, who ran it until 1963. Mackenzie believed that everything in the distillery shaped the whisky, and he would not let anything be altered. The story told about him is that he forbade staff to clear the cobwebs or knock out the dents in the stills, in case it changed the spirit. When DCL rebuilt the distillery in 1962, under his eye, the new stills were made as exact copies of the old ones. The steam engine and water wheel were replaced by electricity that year.

Linkwood A and B

In 1971 a second still house, Linkwood B, was built beside the original, and both sides were converted to steam heating. The combined capacity reached about 2.5 million litres a year. The old side, Linkwood A, was mothballed from 1985 to 1990. Diageo brought it back to full production and released three official bottlings in 2008, and has since issued rare old casks through its Special Releases, including a 37-year-old in 2016.

How it’s made

Linkwood runs three wash stills and three spirit stills: one pair in the old Linkwood A still house and two pairs in Linkwood B. The water comes from springs near Millbuies Loch, a small wooded loch a few miles south of the distillery, now a country park with walks round the shore. The style is light and floral, built for the blending vat, and the spirit is matured mostly in refill casks so the distillery character shows through.

Clans & the land

Linkwood was a landowner’s venture, not a clan’s. Its founder managed the estates of the Earls of Seafield, the chiefs of Clan Grant, who owned great swathes of Moray. Elgin itself was a royal burgh and cathedral city, and the lands around it were long contested between the Grants and the Gordons.

Visiting

Linkwood is not open to the public. The nearest distilleries you can visit are BenRiach and Glen Moray, both close to Elgin. While you are in town, the ruined Elgin Cathedral, burned by the Wolf of Badenoch in 1390, is one of the finest medieval ruins in Scotland, and Millbuies Country Park, Linkwood’s water source, makes a quiet walk.

Nearby distilleries

• Glen Elgin: a few miles south on the Rothes road, another Diageo blending malt.
• Longmorn and BenRiach: neighbours a little further south. BenRiach is open to visit.
• Glen Moray: on the west side of Elgin, with tours and a shop.
• Glenlossie, Mannochmore and Miltonduff: the other Elgin-area distilleries, all production-only.

Our Speyside Whisky Trail covers Elgin on its final leg. The whisky hub covers every region in Scotland.

Sources

• Linkwood distillery — Wikipedia.
• Diageo / Malts.com.