The Glen Moray distillery has been at the heart of the community in Elgin, the capital of Scotland’s Speyside whisky region, for more than 125 years. Since the first drops flowed from the stills on 13 September 1897, Glen Moray’s focus on flavour exploration has been tantamount to its success, with the founders drawing on a huge array of casks even in its early days.
Today, the distillery continues to distil a sweet, viscous spirit at its home on the outskirts of its hometown in the Scottish Highlands. The small team of craftspeople who make Glen Moray -— from distillery manager Ross Murphy to head of whisky creation Stephen Woodcock — focus on creating a complex, fruity new-make spirit during the distillery’s seven-day-a-week production, which is then transformed over years of maturation in an exciting array of oak casks.
With striking packaging highlighting the distillery’s spirit of exploration, Glen Moray’s Explorer Range allows whisky lovers to experience a whole array of exciting aromas and tastes. By skilfully drawing on spirit matured in ex-bourbon barrels and finishing casks that previously held sherry, port and table wine, the Glen Moray team is able to craft whiskies to suit all tastes — whether the drinker is a seasoned whisky enthusiast or a newcomer.
The wide variety of unique and interesting casks drawn upon by Glen Moray has given Woodcock and his team deep insight into how oak and wine can influence whisky’s aromas and flavours, bringing out the very best in Glen Moray’s two key spirit styles, peat-smoked and unpeated. At every opportunity, the whisky-making team looks to further add to the complexities one can find in a bottle — complexities that the team is now celebrating with a new global campaign. Bringing the Glen Moray team’s passion for exploration to life, the immersive new campaign invites drinkers to explore cask influence through a series of striking visuals, designed to engage and inform (see page 65).
Showcasing Glen Moray’s contemporary packaging, each visual features a bottle invitingly positioned in front of cask staves. The wood’s hues illustrate the finishing cask’s original contents, such as bourbon, sherry, port, or table wines including chardonnay and cabernet. Meanwhile, peat’s effect on the Smoky Classic is subtly reflected in wisps of smoke. Next to the bottle, temptingly placed tasting notes including honeycomb, strawberries, and chocolate bring each cask’s influence on the whisky’s flavour alive. Playful headlines reflecting Glen Moray’s personality welcome experts and newcomers to explore the many flavour possibilities in the distillery’s universe.
In Glen Moray’s warehouses, which sit just to the west of Elgin’s town centre, more than 170,000 casks are maturing at any one time. This huge selection of ageing stock allows the whisky-making team, whose skills have been passed down from generation to generation, to marry many different spirit styles to create new and exciting flavour profiles for the whisky explorer.
Following the recent successful redesign of the Explorer Range, the company has now expanded this same bold and exciting look to its Heritage Range, originally launched in 2016, to encompass several age statements from 12 to 18 Years Old. With a larger font displaying the age of the whisky, alongside striking colour accents that differ for each bottle and fine gold lettering, the new design highlights the premium and contemporary nature of these special releases created using the distillery’s precious aged stocks and the very best casks.
The Glen Moray team’s depth of knowledge in the area of cask maturation stems back to the distillery’s early days. Records show that, even in the late 1800s, the company was interested in using many styles of casks to mature its spirit, such as Marsala wine and sherry. As Elgin sits very near to the Moray coast, with its maritime connections, the distillery was able to source interesting casks from abroad.
Today, Glen Moray is owned by French company La Martiniquaise-Bardinet. Since the French drinks group’s purchase of the distillery in 2008, this relationship has helped the distillery team access to a wider variety of quality casks. A link with sister brand Porto Cruz — a port house in Porto, Portugal — was especially important, given that Glen Moray whisky finished in port casks has been a favourite of whisky connoisseurs for decades.
For the curious and passionate aficionado, the distillery also has several releases which have taken the Glen Moray spirit into new realms of maturation. Fully matured in French oak ex-Cognac casks, Glen Moray Twisted Vine is a lusciously creamy and spicy release that scored an average mark of 8.1 when reviewed blind by Whisky Magazine. Then there’s Phoenix Rising. Matured in freshly charred oak barrels and boasting notes of coconut, caramel, and pepper spice, Phoenix Rising was named Best Scotch Single Malt at the World Whiskies Awards 2024.
Finally, there is the very special Warehouse 1 Collection. Named after the warehouse where the distillery matures its most trailblazing single malts, the collection takes whisky connoisseurs on a journey of discovery. The latest whiskies to join the Warehouse 1 Collection include two whiskies matured in Rioja red wine casks from Spain. Released at cask strength and non-chill filtered with no added colour, these intensely fruity whiskies are sure to surprise and delight any whisky lover.
The first expression, Glen Moray Warehouse 1 Rioja Cask 8 Years Old is unpeated spirit distilled in 2015 which spent its entire maturation period ageing in high-quality ex-Rioja wine casks. Bottled at 59.8% ABV, this whisky is filled with notes of plums, cherries, and fruity tobacco. Then, for those who have a taste for smoke, there’s a peated expression, distilled in 2011, which was laid down initially in bourbon casks before being transferred into ex-Rioja wine casks for a secondary maturation. Bottled at 58.8% ABV, The Glen Moray Warehouse 1 Peated Rioja Finish 11 Years Old has a subtle sweet smoke, with orchard fruit, toffee, and spice notes.
With such a wide variety of intriguing, elegant, and innovative whiskies to explore, Glen Moray’s Explorer, Heritage, and Warehouse 1 collections provide whisky lovers with something outstanding at every stage of their whisky journey, while the stunning new designs showcase the distillery’s contemporary and premium style. Though the distillery has been around for more than 125 years, all this points to the fact that it has found a way to evolve with the times while still maintaining its reputation for quality, and connection to its community.
Learn more at www.glenmoray.com
