Scotland, Eastern Highlands. Distillery operational. Owner: Loch Lomond Group
Loch Lomond is unique in many respects. Sitting at the mouth of the famous loch from which it takes its name, this distillery looks more like a distillation facility than a distillery. Straddling the Highlands and Lowlands, it carries this dual identity to its very core, housing on its site both a grain production unit and a malt production unit. In addition to the independence and flexibility this brings for the production of blends, it also means Loch Lomond is able to produce a plethora of malts, ranging from very peaty to very fruity profiles, which it can, at its leisure, distil in either Lomond still or pot stills. Its three best-known malts are Old Rosdhu, Inchmurrin and Loch Lomond, the subjects of 1966 and 1967 vintage bottlings. Die-hard Tintin fans will also have noted that a certain Captain Haddock enjoyed a Loch Lomond whisky long before the distillery was even built (1965-1966).

Inchmurrin is one of the many styles of single malt produced by the Loch Lomond distillery. Founded in 1966 to meet the growing demand of Scottish blenders, the distillery is equipped with a Lomond still capable of producing at least eight styles of spirit. Originally reserved for the blended scotch industry, it was only much later that the first single malt bottlings appeared.

A Loch Lomond distilled in 2008 and bottled in 2020, matured for 11 years in a bourbon hogshead and finished in a rye hogshead. This is a limited edition of 267 bottles for the Scotch Malt Whisky Society. The Scotch Malt Whisky Society (SMWS) was founded in Edinburgh in 1983 by a group of friends with a particular passion for whisky. The club selects casks whose bottles are then only available to members. The name of the distillery is not mentioned on the label but each distillery is given a number as the malt is bottled. The first cask selected by the SMWS, for example, was Glenfarclas, and it therefore uses the number 1. The second number refers to the number of bottlings from each distillery. The club was sold to Glenmorangie in 2004 and then to a group of investors in 2016.