Dundashill (grain) Distillery — Lowland Single Malt Whisky

Dundashill Distillery is a former Scotch grain whisky distillery located in the Dundashill area of Port Dundas, on the north side of Glasgow, Lowland Scotland. It was founded in 1770 and was closed in 1902, when its operations were merged into the neighbouring Port Dundas distillery. It is reputed to have been Glasgow's first distillery, and its closure left greater Glasgow without an operating whisky distillery for well over a century.

History

Dundashill stood on the Forth and Clyde Canal in the Port Dundas district of north Glasgow, an area that grew into one of Scotland's major centres of industrial grain distilling during the 19th century. Detailed operational records of Dundashill itself are sparse compared with its larger neighbour, but it is consistently cited by whisky historians — and by the modern Glasgow Distillery Company, whose flagship "1770 Glasgow" single malt is named in tribute — as the city's earliest distillery, dating to 1770. By the later 19th century, Glasgow's grain-distilling trade had consolidated around Port Dundas, where two rival grain distilleries founded in 1811 and 1813 had merged in the 1860s and joined the Distillers Company Limited (DCL) in 1877. In 1902, Dundashill's own operations were folded into this larger Port Dundas complex, closing out more than a century of whisky-making under the Dundashill name.

Quick Facts

• Region: Lowland
• Founded: 1770
• Owner: Merged into Port Dundas Distillery (Distillers Company Limited) in 1902
• Status: Closed

Closure & Legacy

Dundashill closed in 1902 when its production was absorbed into the Port Dundas distillery, which continued grain whisky production under DCL and later Diageo until Port Dundas itself closed in 2009. No original Dundashill single grain bottlings are known to survive on the collectors' market, and the fate of the original Dundashill buildings after 1902 is not well documented. The distillery's clearest legacy today is as the namesake of Glasgow Distillery Company's "1770 Glasgow" single malt, launched in 2015 when Glasgow Distillery became the first distillery to operate in the city since Dundashill's closure — underscoring just how long Dundashill's shutdown left Glasgow without a working distillery of its own.