The Cabrach

In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the Cabrach was a centre of illicit distilling. After the Excise Act of 1823 a few licensed distilleries followed; the company names Blackmiddens (known as The Buck), Tomnaven and Mains of Lesmurdie, and ScotchWhisky.com records a Cabrach distillery at Haddoch farm licensed from 1827 to 1834, which closed because it could not compete with the illegal stills.

The Cabrach Trust, founded by Grant Gordon OBE, says it was formed in 2013; its home page gives 2011, the year Companies House shows the company incorporated. In 2013 it bought Inverharroch Farm and 170 acres (about 69 ha). The distillery company was incorporated in 2016 and is wholly controlled by the Trust. Building was helped by the Scottish Government's Just Transition Fund. The first distillation, in late October 2024, was attended by the Deputy First Minister, and the first cask was filled in November 2024. Production is overseen by Alan Winchester, formerly master distiller at The Glenlivet.

The Cabrach is a sparsely populated upland district in Moray, on the northern edge of the Cairngorms National Park and at the rugged eastern edge of Speyside. The Trust says about 1,000 people lived there around 1900 and fewer than 100 do today. The distillery occupies stone steadings at Inverharroch Farm built in 1849. The farmer at Inverharroch grows barley for it, and the Trust plans a heritage centre and café alongside. As a community interest company, the distillery is to put all future profits into the Trust's regeneration of the area.

According to the company, spring barley comes from historic Banffshire, including a small crop from Inverharroch, and all of it is very lightly peated. The malt is milled with a higher share of flour and mashed slowly, with a recirculation (vorlauf) to give clear worts. Six Douglas fir washbacks made in Dufftown are pitched by hand with brewer's and distiller's yeast, and fermentation lasts 168 hours, giving a wash of about 8% ABV. The wash still (2,500 litres) and spirit still (1,800 litres) run at about 2 litres a minute into worm tubs. A third still, the 1,250-litre direct-fired "Buck Still" with an internal worm, is modelled on research into Blackmiddens, which ran from 1825 to 1833 with a single still.

No Cabrach single malt has been released yet. The company aims for a fruity, oily, full-bodied spirit and puts half of it into first-fill American oak casks from Heaven Hill. A large share goes into French red wine barriques, chosen by members of its founding club in March 2025; the company links this to the local tradition that smugglers carried Cabrach whisky to Aberdeen in red wine casks. While the single malt matures, the distillery sells The Feering, a series of Speyside blended malts selected by Alan Winchester from casks bought from other distilleries.