Friday September 11th, a day after its Royal opening, I visited the recently opened Annandale Distillery, which is now the most southerly distillery in Scotland, being just across the border and 7 miles west of Gretna Green.
Alfred Barnard visited the distillery as part of his comprehensive tour in the 1890s and at the time described his own journey and arrival: 'We drove 1½ miles from the hotel to the Distillery, along a pretty country road, from which we diverged down a private carriage-way, crossing a bridge over the Annan Burn, and found ourselves at the gates of the works.' Today the gate is before the burn but at first sight of the distillery buildings little has changed since Barnard's visit.
The distillery was built and first opened in 1830 by George Donald a former excise officer and was then taken over, in 1883, by John Gardner, a Liverpudlian who inherited handsomely upon his father's death and decided to give up his day job in Liverpool to pursue a different type of challenge.
'We spent a pleasant afternoon on this little estate.' Barnard wrote 'Mr. Gardner himself was our guide, and conducted us first of all over the farm buildings at the back of the works, higher up on the stores of the hill. It is quite a model farmstead, the cowsheds, piggeries, and stables being ranged round a square yard; and we saw upwards of twenty fine head of cattle almost ready for the butcher, and a considerable number of pigs, all fed from the draff or grains from the Distillery.'
Today the distillery is 'reborn' as it says on the door to the cafe. By the early 20th Century the distillery had changed hands again and was owned by Johnnie Walker and no doubt the whisky made here ended up in his famous blends. However, production stopped during the first World War and the distillery never really recovered to full production, so it was mothballed.
Stripped of its equipment, the original still house was demolished but the footprint remains, even showing the outline of where the stills once stood. The remaining buildings were left to nature or returned to farm use until they were discovered by David Thomson and his wife Teresa Church in 2009. Thomson is a local lad but the couple now live in Oxford where they run MMR Research Group, a global consultancy business that helps companies maximise the success of product launches by 'using our understanding of consumer decision making to turn brand promise into winning products and packaging'. And it is very evident that they've applied their work to the £10.5 million redevelopment of Annandale Distillery.
Waking around the site and through the rooms as part of the tour, Annandale is a very touchy feely experience. There's lots of wood but it is beautifully carved into shapes that make you want to stroke and feel it. The doors are heavy and solid, the craftsmanship to the floors, walls, stairways and lighting are all of excellent quality. In places it feels more like an art gallery than a working distillery and in some areas it literally is.
But they are serious about the whisky too. A copper topped mash tun, six Oregon pine wash backs (none of your industrial stainless steel here) and three new copper stills, a large wash still and two 4,000 litre spirit stills.
Currently mashing and distilling 12,000 litres a day and alternating between peated and unpeated spirit, the whiskies celebrate a man of Words and a man of the Sword (notice one is an anagram of the other). The man of words is Robert Burns, national poet and former excise offer in these parts. The man of the sword is King Robert the Bruce, also known as the 6th Lord of Annandale. The new make spirit was available to taste and is already branded and for sale in the visitors centre. The unpeated spirit promises to be light and fruity and the peated spirit will probably be subtle and mellow, rather than going head-to-head with the big players from Islay. The branding for now is interesting and I wonder if they'll bottle the matured spirit in matt black bottles as well?
A modest warehouse is being filled with ex-bourbon casks and whilst there are plans to find more warehousing locally, nothing was said about experimenting with different cask types. All of the spirit is planned for single malt with none being sold for blending. The owners are clearly in this for long term and the distillery is certainly built to last.
As I was leaving, the car park was filling up and the next tour looked as if it was going to be busy. Annandale Distillery and its whiskies could soon be another successful case study for MMR Group.
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