The Cairn Distillery Builds Its Future Stone by Stone
The first time I heard about The Cairn Distillery, it still seemed a distant dream. In June 2019, a few friends and I attended a tasting with Stephen Rankin, Director of Prestige at Gordon & MacPhail. The tasting itself deserves a story of its own, but here I will stick to his offhand remark about, after reviving Benromach in the 1990s, opening a second distillery close to Grantown-on-Spey. Exactly seven years later, I would walk straight into his dream for the future.
By Tom van Engelen – www.longpouramour.com
‘Do you know yet what you are going to call that distillery?’ I asked Mr Rankin back then. We were at the tail end of our visit to the Spirit of Speyside Festival. ‘Something with Glen, perhaps?’ I added. He had not settled on a name yet (or at least was not willing to tell us), but that there would be a “glen” in it, of that he was quite certain. ‘No way!’ So when the news came, years later, that Gordon & MacPhail was going to open its second distillery and that it would be called The Cairn, my mind went straight back to that memorable gathering with Stephen Rankin. Luckily, I was able to dig up the photos of the tasting.
Of course, the distillery cannot be compared to Benromach, the venerable whisky plant that G&M took over in the nineties from its previous owner, Diageo (or United Distillers as it was called back then). Benromach had heritage, and there was even plenty of mature stock available. A very different run-up. The Cairn has been built from the ground up. Stone by stone, almost literally, on the banks of the River Spey and at the foot of the Cairngorms.
A Magnificent View
Look out of the large windows in The Cairn’s stillhouse and you will indeed see the mountains of Cairngorms National Park rising before you. A mighty sight. The Cairn is yet another contender for the title of “Best View from a Distillery in Scotland”. It can rival venerable Caol Ila on Islay, with the Paps of Jura across the strait, or brand-new Balmaud in Aberdeenshire, which looks out over broad green fields and the peak of Benrinnes in the distance. All very nice and well, but what are they brewing and distilling in this ultra-modern distillery, a few minutes from Grantown-on-Spey?
It wasn’t very easy to arrange a visit to The Cairn. In the end they were willing to book me in at a regular time. Although I had made it clear that I wanted to produce a piece of journalism, on arrival it turned out that I had been lumped together with a group of cheerful tourists, whose very first encounter with the phenomenon of whisky happened to be scheduled for the same moment. Unfortunately, this meant I could not go into any depth, let alone get answers to my questions. Maybe The Cairn is overrun by curious bloggers and such. I put my little notebook away. Below, nevertheless, are a few of my impressions.
Gordon & MacPhail
The roots of The Cairn go back many years, to the origins of independent bottler Gordon & MacPhail and the vision of George Urquhart, also known as The Father of Single Malt. After all, it was he who devised G&M’s Connoisseurs Choice range and made the concept of single malt whisky accessible to the public at large. Names such as Rosebank, Port Ellen and Strathisla were bottled for the very first time as ‘stand-alone’ single malts. Even the definition of single malt still had to be sharpened up considerably, as in the years that followed people often spoke of Pure Malt as well. It is only right that The Cairn pays attention to these roots. Through an innovative presentation, history rolls towards the present, and even far into the future.
What strikes me about The Cairn is that the distillery has a very businesslike, almost cold air. Even the guide follows such a tight script that she urges us several times along the way to hurry up, ‘because the next group is hot on our heels’. Plan it better, then, I would say. Nor is the interior striking enough to make you want to linger. Grumpy grey steel for the mash tun, cheerless fluorescent tubes overhead, the same grey steel for the washbacks (no philosophising here about the desirable bacteria in wooden washbacks) and some room already set aside for a future expansion. It looks as if Gordon & MacPhail has put up a very sterile, manageable whisky factory, with bulk flowing out of the stills for some anonymous blend. Was this the dream, then? It stands in stark contrast to the atmosphere and traditional enthusiasm at Benromach, in production and on the shelf at your local whisky shop. Granted, I have no visited there since 2013, but I am sure much is still the same.
An Underground River
It is not that we don’t hear any interesting tidbits. The Cairn draws its water from an underground river that runs almost parallel to the Spey on the surface. We learn that they currently make nine mashes a week and that the washbacks are filled for around 120 hours of fermentation. That results in 30,000 litres of new make spirit per production week, or, bottom line, a million litres a year. The tour ends in a room where they work, in rather roundabout fashion, towards an explanation of the Angel’s Share, after passing through that beautiful stillhouse, where the stills were humming away nicely even in June to keep up production. With a little video of those wonderful stills on my phone, I’m happy enough. I hope to visit The Cairn again some day for a more in-depth report. Sadly, that was not in the cards this time. In fact, I left with more questions than answers, to be honest.
