Port Charlotte Distillery — Islay Single Malt Whisky

Port Charlotte Distillery is a Scotch whisky distillery located in the village of Port Charlotte on the Rhinns of Islay, Scotland. It was founded in 1829 and was closed in 1929, after which it lay mothballed for nearly eighty years. Its site is now owned by the nearby Bruichladdich distillery, which uses the old warehouses to mature whisky and has revived the Port Charlotte name as a heavily peated single malt brand.

History

Port Charlotte distillery (also recorded historically as Rhins distillery and Lochindaal distillery) was founded in 1829 by Colin Campbell in the village of Port Charlotte on Islay's Rhinns peninsula. Ownership changed hands repeatedly during its first decades: the firm of McLennan & Grant ran it briefly from 1831, George McLennan continued until his bankruptcy in 1835, and Walter Graham took over around 1837. Hector Henderson and James Lamont, trading as Henderson, Lamont and Company, held the distillery until their own bankruptcy in 1852, after which the remaining 29-year lease was sold for £750. John McLennan then operated it as the Rhins Distillery & Company until 1855, when John Bell Sheriff of Glasgow took control; his firm, later J.B. Sheriff & Co Ltd, ran the distillery from 1895 until 1921. A fire on 18 May 1861 destroyed the kiln and around 20 bushels of malt, one of the few individual incidents recorded in the distillery's long operating history. Benmore Distilleries Limited acquired the site in 1921, and in 1929 it passed to The Distillery Company Ltd, which closed distilling operations. The site subsequently continued in use for malting and warehousing rather than distilling. It remained out of production for decades until Diageo, the eventual owner, sold it in 2007 to The Bruichladdich Distillery Co. Ltd, which converted the buildings into whisky warehouses used to mature spirit distilled at Bruichladdich.

Quick Facts

• Region: Islay, Scotland
• Founded: 1829
• Owner: The Bruichladdich Distillery Co. Ltd (site now used as a warehouse facility)
• Status: Closed

Closure & Legacy

Port Charlotte distillery ceased production in 1929 when The Distillery Company Ltd took over the site, and it remained mothballed as a working distillery for close to eighty years, latterly passing into the hands of Diageo through the consolidation of the Scotch whisky industry. Diageo sold the property in 2007 to Bruichladdich, which does not distil there but uses the old buildings to mature casks of its own spirit. Bruichladdich also revived "Port Charlotte" as the name of its heavily peated single malt range, including expressions such as Port Charlotte Scottish Barley and the cask-strength PC series — these are modern Bruichladdich-distilled whiskies bearing the historic name, not spirit from the original 19th-century distillery. Because the original distillery closed so long ago and its output was never a widely marketed single malt in its own right, genuine pre-1929 Port Charlotte bottlings are exceptionally rare and seldom seen at auction; collectors should take care to distinguish them from the unrelated modern Bruichladdich brand of the same name.