Stronarchie

Speyside

Scotch whisky

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Source www.bbr.com :

Stronachie Blended Scotch Malt

Stronachie, aka "The Lost Distillery", was built in 1890 near the small town of Forgandenny in rural Perthshire under the ownership of Alexander McDonald.

The first significant change in the distillery’s life came about in 1907 when it was sold to Sir James Calder who himself had great expertise within the industry. In 1926 he was forced to sell it, along with a number of other distilleries that he owned, to the Distillers Company. From then on Stronachie was to be hit by a number of problems as coal prices soared and the price of grain increased dramatically. Like numerous other distilleries at that time Stronachie was closed down and around 1930 dismantled. Today there is little evidence of where the distillery once stood except for a small area of low stone walls.

Nevertheless Stronachie experienced a resurection in 2002, when the new owners Dewars-Ratree started producing a malt that recreated the style and flavours of 100 years ago, showing a distinct peaty or earthy chraracter, which typified Single Highland Malt whiskies from that era. The peat character, rather uncommon in Highland malts today, was generally down to the associated distillation techniques at the time. The label design on the Stronachie bottles now includes an image of how the distillery looked during some of its lifetime.

During 2002, as the project of rebuilding the Stronachie legend developed, a bottle of Stronachie dated 1904 was discovered in private hands. It is believed that there are 2 other examples of different vintages belonging to collectors in Germany and Japan. This authenticity has given extra credence to the Stronachie story and in order to find a single malt that could match the 1904 Vintage as closely as possible, a small sample was syphoned off and matched to a distillery that reflected the style, character and flavour of that original malt.