2nd May 2024 | Top Drops | 7 minute read
Any Scotch lover will be familiar with the one-and-only Fettercairn distillery. One of Scotland’s oldest and most prestigious whisky makers, we’ve been enjoying Fettercairn since 1824, seeing it evolve from humble beginnings to becoming a world-renowned distiller with aspirations to do great things beyond making memorable malts. Join us as we take a look at their inspiring story and celebrate 200 years of big dreams and delicious drams.
Fettercairn is known for producing exceptionally refined Scottish whisky, and for being one of the first licensed distilleries in Scotland.
This year, the team at Fettercairn are celebrating their 200th anniversary, which is why we’re shining the spotlight on them across our social channels, website and emails (whisky fans, keep an eye on your inbox for a chance to win four extremely rare Fettercairn single malts signed by distillery manager Stewart Walker and master whisky maker Gregg Glass!).
It’s no secret that we enjoy a good celebration here at Virgin Wines, especially for a milestone as big as this, but let’s take it back to why we fell in love with Fettercairn in the first place.
We’ve admired Fettercairn’s whisky-making mastery long before we even launched our own spirits range in 2019. Based in a small Aberdeenshire village that’s rich with golden barley fields and fresh mountain spring water, this is a distillery that prides itself on going to extraordinary lengths to capture the purest expression of Scottish whisky.
The village of Fettercairn lies in the heart of flourishing farming land, giving master whisky maker Gregg and his team everything they could possibly need. There are a few key elements for creating their signature style of Scotch, with the first being crystal-clear mountain water gathered naturally at the foothills of the Cairngorms. Not only is this all-important water used as an ingredient in the whisky, it’s also used to cool the copper stills during distillation.
Much like how it cascaded down the mountains, the water pours down the outside of the pot stills from a special contraption called a cooling ring. This creates more condensation within and ensures only the lightest, finest vapours rise to the top for collection (anything heavier drops back down to the bottom of the still).
No one else in the world uses this precise cooling ring technique, so it’s a method that’s been exclusive to Fettercairn since they invented it in the 1950s. It’s also what gives all Fettercairn whiskies those trademark base notes of mango, passion fruit and pineapple.
Other key ingredients in Fettercairn whisky are the locally sourced barley used for the grain, and the oak casks that are handpicked to add complementary flavours to the whisky’s tropical fruit palate while it matures. Nowadays, Fettercairn distillery has over 30,000 of these oak casks for ageing whisky across 14 dunnage warehouses.
Shaped by a state-of-the-art distillery, carefully selected casks and picturesque surroundings, Fettercairn whisky is a completely unique style of Scotch. The production process and passion that goes into it is undoubtedly impressive, but, all of this aside, it’s also a delicious drop you want to sip and savour at the end of a long day. Simply put, it’s incredible quality stuff that we love to drink and the team at Fettercairn love to produce.
Distillery manager Stewart and master whisky maker Gregg like to dream big, and you can see how much this inspires those around them, from their production team to the wider Aberdeenshire community.
Fettercairn distillery has always done things a little differently in the pursuit of its whisky’s distinctive taste, and this ethos of daring to be different carries through to ambitions for the future. Lovingly dubbed “the Willy Wonka of whisky” by the Fettercairn staff, Gregg is the mastermind behind the unique tropical flavour of their Scotch and is integral to the distillery’s innovative spirit. His team has an “enlightened” approach to whisky making where everyone is encouraged to think big and unconventionally, which has sparked a number of initiatives over the years.
One of these is the Fettercairn 200 Club, which is a lifelong alliance the distillery has established with the local Scottish Highlands farming community to sow seeds for a brighter future. Thanks to this scheme, the barley used in Fettercairn whisky will be harvested from fields within a 50-mile radius of the distillery for generations to come.
Another initiative of Stewart and Gregg’s is the Fettercairn Forest project, and it’s their most ambitious to date. They believe that the next 100 years are more important than the past 200 that Fettercairn has been in business, so have planted 13,000 oak saplings on the grounds surrounding their estate.
A century from now, this area will be a luscious, green forest. It’s the inspiration behind the intricate steel sculpture that stands proudly in front of the distillery. Designed by landscape artist Rob Mulholland, ‘Forest Flow’ is a metal structure with thousands of leaf-like shapes that glisten above a pool of the same pure spring water that’s found in Fettercairn whisky. It represents how the growing forest, flowing mountain spring and distillery are all interlinked.
Not only do we enjoy indulging in this fantastic whisky, we also appreciate Fettercairn’s careful consideration of everything that happens from grain to glass. So, here’s to 200 years of great whisky and the wonderful bunch of people who make it. Cheers!
