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Distilleries
in Easter Ross.

It’s 20:07 in Easter Ross.
Easter Ross

Edderton and Tain on the Dornoch Firth.

Whisky has been made on the south shore of the Dornoch Firth for well over two centuries. At Edderton, a distillery of warm pink-grey stone has been working since 1790, and it releases its whisky as vintages, each named for the year it was distilled. Just outside Tain, where the A9 sweeps down to the water, the stills stand over twenty-six feet tall, their shape copied from second-hand London gin stills. There are tours at each, and at Edderton they follow the whole process and finish with a tasting. Book ahead, and bring a driver if you want a dram.

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Quiz17 hours ago

Glenmorangie's stills at Tain, the tallest in Scotland, all keep the long-necked design of a pair it brought in 1887 from what kind of distillery?

Did you know15 hours ago

Balblair distillery, on the Dornoch Firth, played the auction house in Ken Loach's film The Angels' Share.

In the film, a group of young Glaswegians plan to lift whisky from the last cask of a legendary lost malt called Malt Mill. The cask was invented for the story, but the auction where it goes under the hammer was filmed for real at Balblair, at Edderton in Easter Ross. Malt Mill itself did once exist, as a small distillery on Islay that closed in 1962.

See Balblair Distillery · Easter Ross
True or false13 hours ago

True or false: the Hilton of Cadboll Stone, the Pictish cross-slab whose carved swirls inspired Glenmorangie's emblem, still stands where it was raised.

From the magazine11 hours agoThe printed copy of Issue 10Issue 10Spring / Summer 2025

Clare Campbell, founder of the Prickly Thistle tartan mill in Easter Ross, designed a tartan for Dennis the Menace's 70th birthday based on his striped jumper.

Clare began in 2018 with a crowdfunding campaign for a pop-up mill in Easter Ross, sourcing looms from the 1920s from the Scottish Borders. When Covid struck, she chose to keep her workforce in jobs rather than pour money into a costly new building. The mill now designs tartans for whisky distilleries, Highland estates and even The Beano comic, home of Dennis the Menace. It also weaves its own Prickly Thistle tartans for a small clothing line cut from rectangles, squares and triangles, so nothing ends up on the cutting room floor. For Clare, it was never about a mill, but about bringing an industry back to the Highlands.

Read the full story in Issue 10
Did you know9 hours ago

In the 1820s the smugglers of Easter Ross undercut the licensed distilleries so easily that only two were left, and Balblair, near Edderton, was one of them.

In the early 1800s dozens of new licensed distilleries opened in Easter Ross, and the illicit whisky makers undercut their prices and drove them out of business. By the end of the 1820s only two were still at work: Teaninich, and Balblair, which had been founded in 1790. It was almost ten years before the next wave came, with Glen Ord in 1838, Dalmore the year after and Glenmorangie in 1843.

See Balblair Distillery · Easter Ross
Lunch6 hours agoEaster RossGreens Restaurant4.8 milesEaster RossPlatform 18644.9 milesSutherlandCocoa Mountain Dornoch6.4 miles

Lunch near Balblair Distillery.

The three good places closest to it: Greens Restaurant, Platform 1864 and Cocoa Mountain Dornoch.

See Balblair Distillery
New at Glenmorangie4 hours ago

Glenmorangie has released a 50-year-old single malt, the oldest whisky it has ever bottled.

Just 149 bottles have been filled, from spirit distilled at Tain in the mid-1970s, some of it made with barley malted at the distillery before its floor maltings closed in 1977. It is sold through selected retailers and the distillery's visitor centre.

See Glenmorangie Distillery · Easter Ross
Distillery of the day2 hours ago

Glenmorangie Distillery.

The distillery by the Dornoch Firth just outside Tain, famous for the tallest stills in Scotland, with a visitor centre, shop and tours to book ahead.

Read about it
Did you know19 minutes ago

Balblair distillery near Edderton stood silent from 1911, spent the Second World War in the hands of the army, and only made whisky again in 1949.

Balblair was mothballed in 1911, and in 1939 the army commandeered its empty buildings for the rest of the war. After the war, Churchill decreed that whisky must be made, and sold to America. In 1948 Robert 'Bertie' Cumming, a solicitor from Banff who already owned the Old Pulteney distillery, bought Balblair for £48,000, and the next year its stills ran for the first time since before the First World War.

See Balblair Distillery · Easter Ross
QuizJust now

In 2007 Balblair distillery, near Edderton, decided to put what on its single malts instead of an age?

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