The distillery, on the southern coast of the Hebridean island of Islay, has recommenced production this week. When contacted by Global Drinks Intel, a spokesperson for Diageo said the facility has an annual production capacity of 1.6m litres of pure alcohol.
The decision to bring Port Ellen back into operation after it was mothballed in 1983 was announced by the group just over six years ago. An investment of GBP35m (then-US$45.7m) was earmarked for both Port Ellen and the Brora distillery on the north-east coast of Scotland, which was closed in the same year. At the time, Diageo, which also owns the Caol Ila and Lagavulin distilleries on Islay, said the pair of ‘ghost’ distilleries would each have annual capacities of 800,000 litres.
Details on why the capacity is double the initial volume were not immediately available.
The carbon-neutral facility – energy is sourced from a biofuel boiler – houses four stills, two of which are replicas of the original Port Ellen stills, while the other pair, dubbed the “experimental stills”, will “take the art and science of whisky exploration to levels of precision never before seen in scotch whisky distillation”, according to Diageo.
Islay is home to nine distilleries owned by the likes of Beam Suntory (Bowmore and Laphroaig), Moët Hennessy {Ardbeg) and Rémy Cointreau (Bruichladdich). Diageo’s rival, Pernod Ricard, announced late last year that it had purchased land on the island to construct a new whisky production facility.
