Banff distillery

About the distillery

Banff distillery lay in Banff in Aberdeenshire and belonged to Speyside. It was a Scottish single malt distillery with an unusually dramatic history: founded in 1863, ravaged by fire, hit by wartime damage, and later closed and dismantled. Today, the name lives on mainly as a piece of whisky history, with a clear geographical link to Fiskaidly farm.

History

The story of Banff begins as early as 1824, when the first distillery bearing the name was built in Inverboyndie by James McKilligan & Co. Later, ownership changed hands several times, first to Alex Mackay in 1837 and then to James Simpson Sr. and James Simpson Jr. in 1852. In 1863, James Simpson Jr. built a new distillery on the same site, now with better access to the railway and a stronger supply of water from the springs on Fiskaidly farm.

The distillery had a turbulent operating history. A major fire in 1877 destroyed most of the plant, but operations were back up and running already that same year. In 1921, the Simpsons’ family sold part of the business to the Mile End Distillery Company, and in 1932 Distillers Company took over the entire distillery and stopped production immediately. During the war, the warehouse was hit by a German air raid in 1941, and later a serious explosion occurred in 1959 when steam was ignited during repairs of a boiler. Production continued for a while longer, before the distillery was shut down for good in 1983. In the late 1980s, most of the buildings were gone, and the last warehouse building burned down in 1991.

Raw materials and production

Banff was a malt whisky distillery, and one of its most distinctive technical features was triple distillation, which was used until 1924. This is an unusual trait in Scottish whisky and points to a style where the spirit was passed through three distillation stages rather than the more common two. The distillery was first fired with coal, and all the way until 1963 the boilers were fed manually. Then a mechanical coal system was introduced, and in 1970 heating was changed to oil burners.

The water supply was just as central to the site as the process. The distillery used the springs on Fiskaidly farm, and the cooling water was drawn from the Burn of Boydine. The combination of a better water source and the proximity to the Great North of Scotland Railway tells of a facility planned with both logistics and supply in mind. It was a distillery where practical decisions about transport, water, and firing shaped the work as much as the production itself.

Maturation and cask types

Banff’s maturation was tied to the distillery’s warehouse buildings, and it is precisely here that a large part of the story becomes dramatic. A fire in 1877 left only the warehouse building largely intact, and in 1941 warehouse building no. 12 went up in flames after the air raid, so both casks and stored stock were lost. The last warehouse building was later destroyed in a fire in 1991. This gives Banff a clear picture of a distillery where the physical setting for maturation was vulnerable and was changed multiple times by fire and destruction.

General flavor profile

Visit the distillery

Banff cannot be visited as an active distillery. The site is closed and dismantled, so there are no public tours, tastings, shop, or visitor center on site. What you can experience is the place itself as a historical whisky trail in the landscape around Banff and Boyndie, where photographs and references to the former distillery bear witness to its former location.

Philosophy and craftsmanship

Banff’s most evident choices were about function and supply. James Simpson Jr. located the new distillery so that it had both better access to the railway and a more stable water source. Later, operations changed with new firing techniques and mechanical coal supply, showing a facility that was continuously adapted to keep production going.