Scotland welcomed the arrival of its newest single malt whisky distillery on Friday 20 June, with the official opening of Ardgowan on the Clyde coast. While temperatures may not have quite matched the heatwave searing the south of England, guests basked in the warmth as the summer sun glinted off the distillery’s striking roof.
The apex of the distinctive anodised steel cladding — which, from a distance, resembles the colour of the copper stills inside — slopes from a height of 20 metres down to 14 metres, with its shoulders standing at 6.5 metres above the ground. The church-like shape has been hailed as a “cathedral of whisky” and so it was appropriate that the bagpiper played the popular tune “Highland Cathedral” after the ribbon was cut.
Martin McAdam, who came up with the concept for Ardgowan nine years ago with business partner Alan Baker, told guests about the obstacles the team had overcome during the construction project, including environmental monitoring as the distillery is built on the site of the town’s former Victorian gasworks.
He also praised the support Ardgowan received from the local community, recounting how 600 people had studied the plans for the distillery over the course of two days when they were unveiled at the Inverkip Hotel in 2018 and only one person objected to the local council.
McAdam, who is now the distillery’s ambassador, handed over the reins as its chief executive in February to Roland Grain, who led the team of investors that backed the project. Grain spoke eloquently about how he and a group of friends sat at a winery in Vienna, Austria, some 15 years ago and decided to build a whisky distillery.
Grain explained that he had gained experience by investing in distilleries including Cotswolds, East London, and the Lakes before becoming Ardgowan’s majority shareholder. “From all this, I learned that distribution is king, and so I also bought Potstill, Austria’s best whisky importer too,” he added.
Kate Forbes, Scotland’s deputy first minister and economy secretary, cut the ribbon after giving a short speech during which she contrasted the local economic benefits brought to communities by the well-paid and highly skilled jobs created at distilleries with the international reach of Scotch whisky, which she said was exported to 180 countries.
Rising construction costs caused by the war in Ukraine led to the team focusing on the distillery itself, with the planned visitors’ centre yet to be built. But the plethora of old estate buildings on the site means other spaces will be converted into tasting rooms and a shop, with public tours expected to start in the coming months.
Inside, distillery manager Laura Davies — who joined Ardgowan after 12 years at Penderyn in Wales — introduced guests to a pair of wash and spirit stills, capable of producing one million litres of pure alcohol (LPA) each year. Infrastructure is already in place to double output, with space even marked out on the floor for the second set of stills.
The washbacks are fitted with equipment to capture the carbon dioxide gas produced during the fermentation process. Grain also explained that the distillery is ready to handle hydrogen, with the modular design of its goods yard allowing it to swap equipment without affecting the production process for the whisky.
Standing on the ground floor, looking up at the bases of the stills and the giant washbacks, Ardgowan’s appearance has echoes of the new Macallan distillery, albeit on a smaller scale. While its one million LPA may make it a “craft” distillery, Ardgowan is clearly operating to the same exacting standards as its much larger rivals.
Away from the hustle and bustle of the well-attended opening ceremony, Paul Currie — chairman of Ardgowan and co-founder of Isle of Arran Distillers and the Lakes Distillery — leads the way into one of the old stone estate buildings, which has been converted into a warehouse. Inside sits the real star of the show: cask number one.
Stuart MacPherson, the Macallan stalwart who joined Ardgowan as its “master of wood” in 2022, commissioned Spanish cooperage José Y Miguel Martín to create “the infinity cask”, a £100-million project to build a larger vessel in which to age whisky. Miguel Martín Guzmán, the company’s director and son of its founder, was one of the guests of honour at the opening ceremony.
“The infinity cask is something new for the industry — it’s a new idea and it’s fantastic,” Currie told Whisky Magazine. “The whole idea is to be a long-maturing whisky.”
The larger volume of the cask should reduce the proportion of the liquid coming into contact with the wood, allowing the whisky to retain more of its spirit flavours without being overpowered by the oak. Currie expects Ardgowan’s youngest releases to sit at the 10- or 12-year-old mark, before climbing to 15 and beyond.
