Distillery Spotlight: Blair Athol

Today it is called Blair Athol, however it started life as Aldour.

The name came from the little stream that ran through the site, which the locals called the Allt Dour. In Gaelic, it means "the stream of the otter."

That stream still runs through the grounds, flowing down from the hills above. There is a otter is still on the label.

The first venture didn't last. The distillery struggled and was eventually shut down, until John Robertson rebuilt and expanded it in 1825 and gave it the name it carries today, borrowed from a village seven miles to the north.

That village is home to Blair Castle, and in 2022 the castle gave up a secret of its own. Bottles of whisky were found behind a hidden cellar door, with records showing it had been made in 1833 and bottled in 1841. If those dates are right, it is the oldest Scotch ever found, judged by the year it was made. It is believed to be the same whisky Queen Victoria and Prince Albert drank during their stay in 1844. At auction in 2023, the bottles sold for almost £400,000 in total.

Whisky, it seems, has been a way of life in this part of Scotland for a very long time.

Back at the distillery, the Victorian decades belonged to one family. Elizabeth Conacher ran Blair Athol from 1860 to 1882. A woman in charge of a Highland distillery, more than a century before that was common.

Then came the partnership that would define everything.

Blair Athol had been supplying whisky to Bell's since the brand first launched in 1896. When the Great Depression hit, the distillery closed in 1932, and the Bell family's company stepped in to save it a year later. In 1949 it was rebuilt and reopened, and it has been running ever since.

By the 1970s, Bell's was on its way to becoming the UK's best-selling blended whisky, and Blair Athol doubled in size to keep up.

Today the distillery belongs to Diageo, one of the world's biggest drinks companies and the owner of Johnnie Walker and Guinness.

2.8 million litres a year. That is roughly what Blair Athol can produce, and almost all of it disappears into blends. Mainly Bell's Original, the bottle on every supermarket shelf in Britain. Johnnie Walker has named it as one of the key whiskies in its Black Label editions too.

Which is exactly why it is so hard to find a bottle that says Blair Athol on the front. A whisky made entirely at one distillery and sold under its own name is called a single malt, and Blair Athol has just one regular official single malt: a 12 Year Old under the famed 'Flora and Fauna' range.

When Diageo does let the whisky stand on its own, people pay attention.

In 2017, a 23 Year Old was the first official release in fourteen years, and the first time Blair Athol had been chosen for Diageo's annual collection of rare, limited bottlings. It was aged in casks that had once held sherry. 5,514 bottles were produced, and they launched in UK shops at just under £400 each.

In 2025, a 20 Year Old followed, a limited edition of 1,002 bottles at £400 each. At the World Whiskies Awards 2026, it was named the best limited-release single malt from Scotland's Highlands.

The taste is the reason. Sweet, nutty and fragrant, with a rich, full-bodied texture, it is the kind of whisky the big brands have kept coming back to for well over a century.

Two hundred and twenty-eight years on, the stream of the otter still runs past the distillery.

Beyond the 12 Year Old, a new bottle of Blair Athol single malt only comes along once in a long while, and when it does, it is a limited run.

If you want to be certain of having bottles of your own, the surest way is to own the cask.