DALMORE – Behind the Label

As single malts began to take off, The Dalmore was a little late to the party, but it made up for lost time particularly in Asia becoming ever more premium along the way. As it prepares to double in size, Tom Bruce-Gardyne takes a peek behind the scenes …

"It is the engine that drives Whyte & Mackay … it's the diamond in the portfolio." So says Kieran Healey-Ryder, the firm's head of whisky discovery, about The Dalmore. Over the years this fabled single malt from the banks of the Cromarty Firth, north of Inverness, has been buffed and polished into one of the glossiest single malts out there.   

"Time and again, the historic Highland producer has smashed price records for single bottles of whisky," wrote Brad Japhe of Dalmore, in Forbes magazine in April 2022. The Macallan may now dominate the auction market for high-end Scotch, but it was a 62 year-old Dalmore that started the arms race when it sold for £28,877.50 in 2002. It was an unheard-of sum at the time, but now seems almost a bargain.

In 1867, just shy of its thirtieth birthday, the Dalmore distillery was acquired by the Mackenzie brothers whose clan crest of a stag's head became the whisky's symbol. The family ensured it was always available as a single malt, and shipped it as far as Australia from the 1870s onwards, but gradually its production was absorbed into blends.

It was a key malt in Whyte & Mackay, whose owners eventually merged with Dalmore in 1960. The Mackenzie's got 60% of the shares, though master distiller Richard Paterson OBE reckons it was more of a takeover, and in the decades that followed the distillery and its whisky rather faded from view. All that seemed to matter was the Whyte & Mackay blend.

In hindsight, its owners were probably slow to appreciate the potential of single malts. But before The Dalmore was repackaged in its bell-shaped bottle and silver stag to enter this growing new category, its stocks were being carefully curated by Richard and his loyal companion Margaret 'Mags' Nicol. Every November the pair would migrate north to nose their way through hundreds of casks to see how they were doing. Any rare gems were put to one side, while any cask needing a boost would be decanted into something more interesting.

For almost a decade they have been joined by master whisky maker Gregg Glass. The work, carried out in dank, cold warehouses is far from the glitz and glamour of marketing. But it is where the real substance of the brand is built, along with distillation in Dalmore's idiosyncratic collection of stills.

Mark Lancaster, the distillery manager, has described it as a "massively unbalanced system", which requires skilled, hands-on intervention to keep the newmake spirit consistent. A new stillhouse is being built to double the current capacity of around 4.3 million lpa, and "Mark has the challenge of bringing the original stillhouse and the new one into sync," says Kieran Healey-Ryder.

With a spend rumoured to be around £40m, the refit includes a new visitor centre set to open in 2026. Even after the expansion which will take years to translate into extra bottles, Dalmore will still be dwarfed by the Glenfiddich's, Glenlivet's and Macallan's of this world. Asked if its current scale gives it an edge in terms of rarity, Kieran replies: "It's a significant part of the story of why Dalmore commands the prices it does. We've doubled the sales volumes within the last five years, and yet demand still outstrips supply by quite some way."

It is hard to exaggerate Richard Paterson's role in driving The Dalmore upmarket. As Kieran says: "Above and beyond his whisky artistry, he is a showman, and that showmanship combined with people like Sukhinder Singh setting up whisky shows around the world. That gave him a platform which led to the excitement around the brand in a pre-internet age when being physically present was really important."

Richard trod the boards like a true Glaswegian performer – whisky's answer to Stanley Baxter and Billy Connolly.  He also believed passionately that malts like The Dalmore could dance toe to toe with the most expensive Cognacs, especially in Asia. Here, travel retailers undoubtedly helped "particularly in Changi (Singapore airport) where they gave us disproportionate space to tell our story," says Kieran.

As for being a 'luxury', he feels that's for others to judge. "The first rule is don't ever consider yourself to be a luxury brand," he says. "But recognise there are parts of the business through luxury retailers, luxury restaurants, cruise ships, destination holiday places … and that's the world you'll find The Dalmore in."

While that world is currently shrinking, certainly in China, he is confident the brand can expand geographically and pivot westwards. "It's always been the case that The Dalmore has lived a life in Asia that's slightly ahead of Europe and America," he says. In the States it has a strong base in Los Angeles and New York, and there's plenty of untapped potential in between if Scotch is spared those Trumpian tariffs. Kieran, forever the optimist, is not convinced they are coming.

He describes single malt as a "really resilient" category, and that's certainly true of The Dalmore which has had ten different owners just in Richard Paterson's time at Whyte & Mackay. The company was almost split up during Diageo's brief tenure in 2013, but it somehow survived along with its faithful engine, built in 1839 and still going strong.