Ailsa Bay
Flexible Lowlands distillery situated within the Girvan complex producing a range of malt styles.
Kininvie
Distillery & brand
Wrongly dismissed as nothing more than a shed, Kininvie is a fascinating – and little-explored – distillery.
Kininvie distillery
Speyside Single Malt Scotch Whisky
The mashing and malting takes place in dedicated vessels within Balvenie, but it doesn’t use any of Balvenie’s own-malted barley and the fermentation is slightly longer. The wash is then pumped to the stillhouse, where three sets of three stills (one wash still feeding two spirit stills) are located.
The spirit stills are similar in shape to those at Glenfiddich, but the wash stills are larger. The character is more floral than Glenfiddich, with a soft, tongue-coating quality. Ageing takes place in a variety of woods: first-fill Bourbon, refill and some Sherry.
Kininvie History
It was pressure on stock that prompted William Grant & Sons to build a third distillery on its Dufftown site in 1990. Glenfiddich’s success meant that its production had to be ring-fenced for single malt, but there was still a need for the firm to produce single malt in-house for its blending requirements. In more recent years, Kininvie has provided the backbone for Grant’s blended malt brand, Monkey Shoulder.
There have been very occasional bottlings – as Hazelwood – but in 2013 a limited edition 23-year-old was released, initially for the Taiwanese market. The next year it was followed up with a 17-year-old for global markets.
In 2019, the distillery’s newly-established innovation arm, Kininvie Works, released three ‘experimental’ Kininvie whiskies, including a triple-distilled single malt, a single grain using a rye and barley mash passed through its copper pot stills, and a single distillery blend comprising the latter and double-distilled malt.
Timeline
- 1990 William Grant & Sons opens Kininvie on the same site as Balvenie and Glenfiddich
- 2001 A blended whisky containing Kininvie, Hazelwood Centennial Reserve, is released
- 2006 Kininvie is released as a 15-year-old single malt under the Hazelwood brand
- 2008 Hazelwood Reserve, a 17-year-old single malt, is released in duty free
- 2011 The distillery falls silent for a year
- 2013 The Kininvie brand is launched as a 23-year-old single malt in Taiwan
- 2014 Kininvie 17-year-old is launched in global markets; batch two of the 23-year-old is released
- 2019 Three experimental Kininvie whiskies are released, including a blend, single grain and triple-distilled malt
Owner
Current owner
- William Grant & Sons 1990 - present
Contact
- Address
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Kininvie Distillery
Dufftown
Moray
AB55 4DH
United Kingdom - Visitor Opening Hours
- Not open to the public
Map
See also
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Distillery & brand
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Distillery & brand
Balvenie
Balvenie is one of the few distilleries to still operate a floor maltings.