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Milton Of Edradour, Edradour Distillery
Distillery (19th Century)
Site Name Milton Of Edradour, Edradour Distillery
Classification Distillery (19th Century)
Canmore ID 26262
Site Number NN95NE 15
NGR NN 95957 57964
NGR Description Centred NN 95957 57964
Datum OSGB36 - NGR
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/26262
- Council Perth And Kinross
- Parish Moulin
- Former Region Tayside
- Former District Perth And Kinross
- Former County Perthshire
NN95NE 15.00 centred 95957 57964
Distillery [NAT]
OS (GIS) MasterMap, January 2009.
NN95NE 15.01 NN 95874 57878 Distillery Cottages
Location formerly entered as NN 9599 5798.
(Location cited as NN 9598 5800). Edradour Distillery, built 1837. Probably the smallest distillery in Scotland, with a minute malt barn and kiln, a small 2-storey productive building, and six bays of stores.
J R Hume 1977.
Publication Account (1986)
Alfred Barnard had little to say about this distillery during his celebrated tour of the Scottish whisky distilleries in 1887, possibly because it was then operating on a modest scale which would fail to impress him. Founded in 1837, it is now acknowledged to be the last of the small farm distilleries, and until the 1960s continued to employ all the traditional methods and equipment for distilling malt whisky. Although no longer relying upon water-powered machinery or hoome malting, virtually all the plant and buildings remain intact. The latter are recorded in the drawing and photographs, as are the more complex elements of the distillation plant, and collectively they serve to delineate the full range of stages in the whisky-making process.
The distillery preserves several early features of special interest. The two-roller malt-mill, or bruiser, is now perhaps the smalliest and earliest of its type. For cooling the wort prior to fermentation, an old-style refridgerator is used, patented by Robert Morton and Co., which is the last of its kind in the industry. The two washbanks, each of a modest 1000-gallon (4,500-litre) capacity, are kept free of bacteria in the traditional manner, known as 'liming the backs', whereby the inner surface of the vessels is coated with lime-wash applied with a heather broom. The single wash and spirit-stills are mounted on their original coal-fired furnace chambers, though now disused, and each is connected to the traditional worm-pipe for the condensation process. The spirit-still of 480-gallon (2, 185-litre) capacity-probably the smallest in the countryhas a bulbous expansion at the base of the neck which is usually associated with the making of a lighter and more flavoured whisky, and for the same purpose a small cylinder or purifier is introduced between the lyne-arm and the worm.
Another once important feature, situated between the filling-store and the warehouse range, was a small contiguous building which originally served as the whisky store or shop, where, prior to the Maturation Act of 1915, whisky was sold direct from the cask.
Information from ‘Monuments of Industry: An Illustrated Historical Record’, (1986).
