Located on the eastern border of Speyside, but classified as a Highlands distillery, Glenglassaugh is one of the more recently revived distilleries in the 2000s. Founded in 1875 by Scottish entrepreneur James Moir alongside his nephews, as an expansion of his gorvery business, the distillery has always focused on small-scale quality production. The site was chosen due to its proximity to the excellent quality Glassaugh Springs, local barley fields and the previous illicit still was famous for its malts. Upon the death of James the distillery would be sold to Highland Distillers in 1892, who decades later would become a subsidiary of Edrington Group.
In 1960 the entire distillery was rebuilt and the distillery was upgraded to increase capacity and produce lighter malts. During this period the distillery contributed heavily to the Cutty Sark, Laing's, and The Famous Grouse blended whiskies. By 1986, troubles began to hit the blended market and the distillery was closed as the industry refocused on single malts and couldn’t justify many of the smaller scale distilleries. The stills remained silent until 2008, whereby the distillery was purchased by investment firm Scaent Group who released some of the pre-1986 stock as single malts to enormous success. In 2013 the site was acquired by Benriach, who would later be purchased as a whole by Brown-Forman (owners of Jack Daniels) in 2016.
Due to there being a vast 22 year hole in the stock, this has meant that releases have been tactical with the distillery building presence through combined heavily aged statements and newer more floral expressions that capitalise on the growing ‘mixing single malt’ trend.
