On 1 May 1893, the first distillation took place at the Balvenie. The building had been an 18th-century mansion called Balvenie New House; the conversion had taken fifteen months. The man behind it was William Grant, born in Dufftown on 19 December 1839, who had spent the previous twenty years as a clerk and then manager at Mortlach distillery a few hundred yards away. At 54 he was a late entrant to ownership, but he had given his life to learning the trade. He kept working at the distillery until his death in 1923 at 83. The Balvenie is one of the few distilleries that still grows its own barley, malts on its own floor, has its own coppersmith, runs its own cooperage, and employs its own malt master — all five rare crafts, still on site.
Most modern Scotch distilleries outsource almost everything. They buy malted barley from industrial malting houses. They buy casks from cooperages on the other side of Scotland or imported from Spain or America. They send out their stills for repair. The Balvenie is the only working distillery that does all five of the historic rare crafts in-house: growing barley, malting it on a traditional floor maltings, employing an on-site coppersmith for the stills, running an on-site cooperage for the casks, and employing its own malt master. The current malt master is Kelsey McKechnie. Her predecessor, David Stewart, started at William Grant and Sons in 1962 and worked there for over half a century. The work is slow. Stewart received his MBE from Queen Elizabeth II on 5 July 2016, recognition that the craft scale at Balvenie is something rare in the industry.
David Stewart was the first person to formally develop and refine what is now called wood finishing — the technique of maturing a whisky in one type of cask, usually ex-bourbon, then transferring it to a second cask such as ex-sherry, port, or rum for a final period. The second cask deepens and complicates the flavour, layering in spice, dried fruit, or sweetness in ways the original cask cannot produce alone. Stewart did the work at Balvenie in the 1980s and 1990s. The first commercial release was the DoubleWood 12, which became a global standard and was widely imitated. Almost every Scotch whisky brand now offers some kind of finish — Madeira, port, rum, oloroso. The technique is so common today that it is easy to forget someone had to invent it. Stewart did, here.
The core range includes DoubleWood 12 and 17, Caribbean Cask 14, French Oak 16, and PortWood 21. The Stories range launched in 2019, with each release tied to the work of an individual craftsman at the distillery and packaged with art by British print artist Andy Lovell — Story 1 was the Sweet Toast of American Oak, Story 2 the Week of Peat, Story 3 a Day of Dark Barley, and the run continues. The Rare and Precious range includes 30-, 40-, and 50-year-old bottlings. Awards have piled up: the 2013 World Whiskies Awards named the Balvenie 30 Year Old Best Speyside Single Malt; the PortWood 21 took golds and best-in-class titles through 2008 and 2009; the SherryOak 17 was Speyside category winner in 2008. The 2006 International Spirits Challenge gave Balvenie the biggest gold-medal haul any brand had collected in a single year since the competition began.
When William Grant left Mortlach to start his own distillery, he bought a field near Balvenie Castle. The castle was already a ruin by then — abandoned since 1718, briefly garrisoned by Hanoverians in 1746, picturesque and decaying on the hill above. Grant took its name. The distillery sits in the same small valley as Glenfiddich, which Grant founded earlier and which is still owned by his descendants through William Grant and Sons. The two distilleries, Balvenie and Glenfiddich, share a site, a water source, and a family. Balvenie is the smaller and quieter of the two, less of a tourist destination, more of a working factory where five rare crafts continue to be practised because someone decided long ago that they were worth keeping.
Located at 57.457 N, 3.129 W in Dufftown, with Balvenie Castle visible on the hill immediately north of the distillery. Inverness (EGPE) is 65 km west; Aberdeen (EGPD) is 65 km east. Cruise at 2,500-3,500 feet AGL to see the pagoda-roofed kilns characteristic of floor-malting distilleries. The Balvenie and Glenfiddich complexes sit side by side along the River Fiddich, with Mortlach distillery a short distance south through the town.