Garnheath Distillery — Lowland Single Malt Whisky

Garnheath Distillery is a closed Scotch grain whisky distillery that stood in Airdrie, North Lanarkshire, in the Lowland region of Scotland. It was founded in 1964 as part of a purpose-built distilling complex and was closed and later demolished in the 1980s. Garnheath produced grain whisky almost exclusively for blending, and it is remembered today chiefly as the sister plant to the long-defunct Glen Flagler and Killyloch malt distilleries with which it shared its Airdrie site.

History

Garnheath was built by Inver House Distillers Ltd, a company founded in 1964 by American businessman S. S. Neuman as a subsidiary of Publicker Industries of Philadelphia. A site was acquired at Airdrie in March 1964, and Inver House constructed a fully integrated distilling complex there comprising the Glen Flagler malt distillery and the Garnheath grain distillery, drawing water from Lily Loch. Glen Flagler began distilling on 25 February 1965, with Garnheath's grain production coming on stream around the same period. As a grain distillery, Garnheath's output was a continuous-still spirit intended mainly to supply blended Scotch brands rather than to be bottled as a single grain whisky in its own right.

Inver House itself changed hands over the following decades — it was bought by Standard Brands in 1979, went through a management buyout in 1988, and became part of Thai Beverage plc (ThaiBev) in 2006 — but Garnheath did not survive to see most of this corporate history, having already closed and been demolished by the mid-1980s.

Quick Facts

• Region: Lowland
• Founded: 1964
• Owner: Inver House Distillers (historic; now a ThaiBev subsidiary)
• Status: Closed

Closure & Legacy

Garnheath was closed and demolished in July 1986, not long after its neighbouring malt distillery Glen Flagler shut down in July 1985. The wider Airdrie site was subsequently redeveloped, with the surviving buildings converted into an Inver House warehouse facility used for whisky maturation rather than production. Because Garnheath's grain spirit was produced for blending rather than for release as a labelled single grain, independently bottled examples are essentially unknown, and the distillery survives today mainly as a footnote in the history of Inver House Distillers and in the collectible bottlings of its sister distillery, Glen Flagler.