The latter half of the 20th century was a challenging time for Scotch. The drink’s fortunes waned in the late 1970s, and as a result 20 whisky distilleries closed their gates across Scotland in the early 1980s, with seven more closing in the early 1990s. By contrast, there were just two new whisky distillery openings in this time.
During this downturn, the Scotch business was driven almost wholly by blends such as Bell’s, Teacher’s, and Johnnie Walker, with single malt only starting to make its way into bottle and on to the shelf. As the thirst for single malt grew towards the end of the last century and into this, the liquid legacy left behind by some of the closed distilleries started to become highly prized by drinkers and collectors alike. For a business based on forecastingsmoky blending malt and establishing itself as a much-loved single malt with a fervid fanbase of its own. Today, there are few names in the world of single malt Scotch whisky that excite as much as Port Ellen.
