Tormore stands beside the A95 between Grantown and Aberlour, its grand pavilions and ornamental gardens unmistakable to anyone who has driven the Speyside road. Built in 1958 for Long John Distillers and designed by Sir Albert Richardson, then President of the Royal Academy, it was the first entirely new malt distillery raised in Speyside in the twentieth century. The intent was scale and modernity, and for decades the make went almost entirely into blends, chiefly Long John and later Ballantine's under Allied and then Chivas Brothers ownership.
In 2022 Pernod Ricard sold Tormore to Elixir Distillers, the bottler founded by Sukhinder and Rajbir Singh of The Whisky Exchange. Elixir set about giving the distillery a single malt identity for the first time, and the 16 Year Old sits within that revised core range. It is bottled at 48% ABV, non-chill-filtered and of natural colour, a presentation rather more generous than Tormore had previously enjoyed.
The house style here is clean, lightly fruity Speyside, the spirit shaped by tall stems and purifiers on the lyne arms that encourage reflux. Sixteen years in refill American oak adds vanilla and a polite spice without smothering the orchard character. It is not a dramatic whisky, but it is an honest one, and after a generation of obscurity in blending vats it makes a quietly persuasive case for Tormore as a single malt worth knowing.
