Last summer, scotch whisky distillery Rosebank restarted production after being closed for 30 years. Now comes the opening of a new, state-of-the-art visitor experience. Based in the Lowlands town of Falkirk on the banks of the Forth & Clyde canal, Rosebank is midway between Edinburgh and Glasgow—less than an hour’s drive from each. Falkirk is home to the Falkirk Helix, an ecopark whose attractions include The Kelpies, and the Falkirk Wheel, a giant, wheel-like boat-lift connecting two canals that’s an engineering marvel. Now Rosebank Distillery can be added to the list of Falkirk’s attractions.
Although owner Ian Macleod Distillers filled the first cask of the new era with triple-distilled Rosebank new make on July 18th 2023, the distillery wasn’t open to the public until this month. Three levels of tours are offered and range from $32–$385, with the higher priced experiences including tastes of mature Rosebank whiskies bottled by Ian Macleod distilled at the end of the United Distillers era.
Taking the Tour
Tours start with a video projection on the walls of the old dunnage warehouse that shows the history of Rosebank in just over 4 minutes. The Rosebank Reawakening tour (£25/$32) lasts 90 minutes and goes through the production area and concludes with a tasting of Rosebank new make, Glengoyne 12 year old, and Tamdhu 12 year old from Ian McLeod’s other distilleries. The 90-minute Rosebank Rekindled tour (£95/$122) and the tasting includes a pour of Rosebank 31 year old, plus Glengoyne 15 year old and Tamdhu 15 year old. The ultimate experience is Rosebank Revered (£300/$385), a 3-hour deep dive into Rosebank where over lunch, you can compare the spirit from the first runs with the final spirit style chosen for current production, and the tour includes a tasting of three mature Rosebank whiskies aged 31–33 years old, with guests spending time in the Rosebank Academy Room with a private tasting in the Lock Keeper’s cottage.
Rosebank was founded in 1840 by James Rankine, a grocer and tea merchant whose whisky earned a great reputation among scotch whisky blenders for its light, floral style. A Rosebank single malt wasn’t released until the 1960s. The combination of triple distillation with worm tub condensers made it highly distinctive. The old distillery filled its last casks on June 30th 1993, and the stills ran cold. Owner United Distillers, a forerunner to Diageo, ultimately sold the place to the British Waterways Board, now known as Scottish Canals, with a no-competition clause that whisky could not be distilled on the site for 25 years.
In 2008, thieves broke into the abandoned distillery and stole Rosebank’s stills—not to make whisky, but to strip them apart for their valuable copper. Fast forward to 2017, 24 years after that non-compete clause, when Ian Macleod managing director Leonard Russell struck a deal to acquire the Rosebank brand name, site, and the remaining stock still held by Diageo. Like bottlings from other formerly closed distilleries such as Brora and Port Ellen, old Rosebank whisky is actively collected. During the Diageo era, a series of collectible bottlings were released as part of the Rare Malts Selection and annual Special Releases, while Ian Macleod has been releasing even older vintage and legacy Rosebank bottlings since 2020.
The New Equipment
The new Rosebank distillery project was led by distillery manager Malcolm Rennie. The facility is notably spacious and designed to be run by a single operator. Since distilling restarted, Rosebank has been operating 7 days a week and is on course to make 1 million liters of alcohol a year. The new distillery retains some of Rosebank’s original walls, and the original floorboards have been repurposed as wall coverings. Rosebank’s famed brick chimney still towers over the distillery, though it’s no longer in use.
Rosebank has also fully restored the original red-painted Boby mill, which came from Port Ellen Distillery in 1936. Rennie sources unpeated malt from Crisp Maltings in the nearby town of Alloa. The distillery uses Laureate malted barley exclusively, milled to a ratio of 18% husks, 72% grist, and 10% flour. The mashing cycle is just over 7 hours long, and 17 mashes a week are run in their cooper-topped, semi-lauter mash tun. The contents are raked as little as possible to ensure clear worts are collected. The distillery has 8 Douglas fir washbacks, and fermentation takes 62–72 hours once the washback is set. Clear worts can make for a more active fermentation, so the washbacks are fitted with switchers and a mixer—a small spinning cog that helps lift the yeast off the bottom of the washback and put it back into suspension. At the end of the process, the wash contains 8.5–9% alcohol.
Rosebank’s Technique
The revamped distillery has three new copper pot stills, each with a completely different shape. The coppersmiths at still maker Forsyth’s Ltd, crafted the new stills to the specifications of the original stills from the 1840s, though they are larger. For example, the original wash still held 10,000 liters, but the capacity of the new one is 50% bigger. Triple distillation can be tricky to understand as there is more than one way of doing it, but the Rosebank approach is fairly conventional. Distillation begins with the wash still, which can accommodate 15,000 liters—basically the entire washback volume. After 7.5 hours, around 5,900 liters of low wines are collected and joined by the last 5% of the run from the intermediate still. This is then used to charge the intermediate still, tall, and narrow-necked, which results in lots of reflux. The high wines are collected, ready to charge the spirit still, which is a shorter, squat still with a flat head.
Rennie distills slowly and takes a wide cut, which helps to create complexity in the new make. His initial concern was that triple distillation would mean the spirit was too light, but the other contributing factor is the worm tubs, which contain a tapering spiral of copper, 56 feet long, creating a major effect on the spirit character. Rosebank is mainly filled into bourbon casks and a small proportion of refill sherry casks. The oldest remaining cask in the inventory dates from 1989, and there are thought to be fewer than 100 casks of Rosebank from the United Distillers era left in existence.
