Port Ellen Distillery reopened

Petra Milde |

The distillery on Islay will offer tours in the future.

 

The Port Ellen Distillery was closed for over 40 years, but now the Islay distillery's new building has been completed and it was reopened. Diageo has invested 185 million pounds in various projects, part of which in the modern distillery building with lots of glass.

Two pairs of stills are the centrepiece of the new Port Ellen Distillery. The first - called Phoenix Stills - is a replica of the stills from the old distillery, while the second - the Experimental Stills - is intended to create whisky in a completely new style. The "Ten Part Spirit Safe" connected to these Experimental Stills is intended to allow significantly more subdivision of the spirit than is possible with classic spirit safes, which separate the spirit into foreshot, heart and feints.

To mark the opening of Port Ellen Distillery  a limited whisky edition was launched: Port Ellen Gemini is limited to 274 sets, each consisting of two bottles of 44-year-old Port Ellen Single Malt Whisky. Three casks, which were filled in 1978, were later split up and matured in two different types of casks. Diageo's price per set of Port Ellen Gemini is £45,000 in the UK.

Visits and tours will be available to book on the Port Ellen Distillery website or on malts.com. While the monthly Port Ellen Open Day tours (on the first Saturday of each month) are free of charge, the price for the 90-minute tour "The Port Ellen Reborn experience" is £200 per person. It is limited to 12 guests.

 

Images: Diageo

About the author Petra Milde

Petra Milde is a freelance author of books and specialist writing about spirits and food. She has been supporting the Whisky.de editorial team since 2015 and creates informative and entertaining articles in the news section.

Besides her writing work, she moderates tastings and can be met at spirits fairs, both behind the stands and in front of them, looking for new products and interesting people to talk to.

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