Clydeside Distillery: Where Glasgow’s maritime past meets whisky (Distillery Thursday)

Glasgow is a city renowned for its rich past, where both shipbuilding and the water of life have long played starring roles. Those two worlds come together in Clydeside whisky, but what’s the story behind this distillery?

The story of the modern Clydeside Distillery only began recently. The distillery was founded in 2016. Even so, it holds special significance in the whisky world, with a tale that’s directly tied to the history of seafaring.

To tell that story in full, let’s first take a quick tour through Glasgow’s history. In 1863, John Morrison, an ancestor of Clydeside’s founders, helped build Queen’s Dock.

He also contributed to the construction of The Pump House in 1877, a building that would later become iconic. Both sites thrived for decades, with thousands of cases of whisky shipped out. When shipping declined in the 1930s, the dock and the pump house fell out of use.

Queen’s Dock was gradually filled with rubble and transformed into a brand-new tourist area: Queen’s Garden. The Pump House remained and took on various roles over the years, housing an Indian restaurant, an Italian restaurant, and a visitor center for Glasgow Harbour.

Whisky only returned to the story in 2011, when Morrison Glasgow Distillers, led by Tim Morrison and his son, purchased the site. They embarked on a lengthy project to turn the old Pump House into a working distillery.

It took just over five years, and in 2017 Morrison officially brought single malt distilling back to Glasgow. By then, the city had gone more than 40 years without a working whisky still.

In doing so, he restored an important chapter of history and continued the legacy of his great-grandfather, who had once built the Pump House.

The distillery was originally meant to be called Glasgow Distillery, but circumstances prevented it. The Glasgow Distillery Company had just opened its own site under that name. The final choice became Clydeside Distillery, a nod to the riverbank where the whisky is made.

As always, there are three ingredients that make whisky. The barley is 100 percent sourced from Lowlands farms and malted at Simpsons Malt. For Clydeside Distillery, this is crucial, the whisky must be a true 100 percent Lowland expression.

After milling and mashing, it’s time for fermentation. The distillery uses pure water from nearby Loch Katrine for everything.

To draw out as much flavor as possible, fermentation runs a little longer than average, at around 72 hours. Then it’s time to distil, when the two Forsyths stills go to work, followed by maturation in distinctive casks.

Those casks are the pride of the distillery. Dr. Jim Swan devised a unique cask policy that serves as a kind of recipe for maturing the whisky.

Follow that recipe: a rich mix of first-fill bourbon, sherry, STR, and refill bourbon casks, and you’ll get delicious whisky. But as with everything, it ultimately comes down to Clydeside’s Master Blender, who decides when the whisky is ready to leave the cask.

In October 2021, the distillery released its first whisky. Since then, the words Napier and Stobcross have taken on new meaning. They’re not just maritime terms, but also the names of Clydeside’s whiskies.

Clydeside whiskies are widely available. You can pick up a bottle at the distillery itself, or find them in various European countries, including the Netherlands.

If you happen to visit the distillery, we highly recommend one of the many tours on offer. You won’t just learn about whisky, you’ll also dive into Glasgow’s past.