Imperial Distillery

The Imperial plant was built by Thomas Mackenzie in 1897 – the year of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, and, as the name suggests, the construction was a grand scale. The maltings even sported a gigantic cast iron crown at its apex. Mackenzie had already had considerable success in whisky – he owned his new distillery’s neighbour Dailuaine, itself a mighty plant, and then year after would merge the business with Talisker.The market was however beginning to turn sour and while the two established distilleries survived – and prospered, when the downturn came in 1899 it was Imperial which was put into mothballs. With another boom starting around 2010 it seemed that Imperial’s time may have come again, but in 2013 the buildings were demolished to make way for the new Dalmunach distillery.