Loch Katrine Distillery — Lowland Single Malt Whisky

Loch Katrine Distillery is a former Scotch whisky distillery that stood in the Camlachie district of Glasgow's East End, in the Lowland whisky region. It was founded in 1834 and was closed by the Distillers Company Limited (DCL) in 1920, after which its buildings were demolished. It took its best-known name from the famous loch in the nearby Trossachs that still supplies Glasgow's drinking water, though the distillery itself was a city operation built on Camlachie Street.

History

The distillery was established in 1834 by the partnership of Coventry & Bellsland at 130 Camlachie Street. Within a year the business had failed; the site was reorganised and briefly renamed the Whitevale Distillery, and the original company went bankrupt. James Guild Jr. kept it running as manager until 1847, when it was bought by Hector Henderson, a prominent figure in the 19th-century Scotch whisky trade who also owned Caol Ila on Islay and helped establish Littlemill. Henderson ran the Glasgow site as Henderson, Lamont & Co. In 1856 ownership passed to Bulloch & Co., later Bulloch, Lade & Co., and it was around 1870 that the distillery took the name Loch Katrine, after the loch that had become synonymous with Glasgow's water supply following the opening of the Loch Katrine aqueduct in 1859. When the whisky writer Alfred Barnard visited in 1886 for his survey of the United Kingdom's distilleries, Loch Katrine was equipped with wash stills and spirit stills producing an estimated 300,000 gallons of spirit a year, a substantial output for a Lowland distillery of the period. Bulloch, Lade & Co.'s distilleries were eventually absorbed into the Distillers Company Limited (DCL), the combine that consolidated much of the Scotch whisky industry in the early 20th century.

Quick Facts

• Region: Lowland
• Founded: 1834
• Owner: Distillers Company Limited (DCL), at closure
• Status: Closed
• Stills: Wash and spirit pot stills recorded on Alfred Barnard's 1886 visit; exact still count not confirmed in surviving records

Closure & Legacy

DCL closed Loch Katrine in 1920 as part of the wider rationalisation that eliminated many of Scotland's smaller, older Lowland distilleries in the early 20th century. The buildings on Camlachie Street were subsequently demolished, and no trace of the distillery survives at the site today. Because it closed over a century ago and left no standing structure, Loch Katrine is now known mainly through distillery reference works and historical trade records rather than through surviving stock; genuine original bottlings, if any still exist, would be exceptionally rare and of real interest to collectors of historic Lowland whisky, though none are known to circulate on the current market.