A ground breaking ceremony marked the start of construction of the new distillery, visitors centre and three new warehouses, which will allow enough capacity to increase production to 1.2 million litres.
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| Master Distiller James MacTaggart and Managing Director Euan Mitchell breaking ground on Arran's second distillery site |
Situated overlooking the cliffs at Lagg, on the south coast of the island, the new site sits alongside fields of barley that are currently used in distillation at Lochranza.
Following the demand and popularity of Machrie Moor, the peated Arran Malt, Master Distiller of the Isle of Arran Distillery, James MacTaggart, plans to dedicate production at Lagg to more heavily peated single malts.
Commenting on the new distillery site, James MacTaggart, said: “Having been at capacity at Lochranza for some time, the prospect of starting production at Lagg is extremely exciting. As the Arran Malt continues to grow in popularity, the extra storage alone will enable us to lay down more of the award-winning Arran spirit.”
He went on to say: “I’m also very much looking forward to expanding our peated range. By moving production of Machrie Moor and concentrating the distillation of peated malts on the south of the island, I’ll also be freed up to create more of our extremely popular limited editions at Lochranza.”
Construction at Lagg begins as the popularity of distillery visits reaches an all-time high. The distillery site at Lochranza welcomed record numbers of visitors in 2016 with over 104,000 people making the trip to the distillery. This number is expected to rise to a combined 166,900 by 2018 once the new visitor centre in Lagg has been opened.
Posted by Steve Rush