Name the date

Tullibardine distillery's new shop, 1488, is named after a key historical date. But with heads set in the future, it's part of Scotland's newest shopping experience. Kate Patrick reports

The first distillery to be built in the 20th century was the work of the engineer William Delme Evans, who sited his new baby where a brewery had been, on the other side of Auchterarder from Tullibardine Moor, just on the cusp of the Highlands.

The story goes that an illicit still had once operated on the moor; and one day in 1947, a tradesman arrived at the new (legal) distillery and asked: “Is this Tullibardine distillery?” “It is now,” Delme Evans is reputed to have replied, even though ‘Blackford distillery' would better have described its location.

Like so many independent distilling enterprises, Tullibardine ended up in the hands of a bigger company, and was subsequently left dormant for some nine years, until an ambitious rescue operation was mounted in 2003: to reopen the distillery for both whisky production and visitors, add a tasting area, restaurant and shop… and then build five or six more shops, effectively turning Tullibardine into an upmarket, well-out-oftown, distinctively Scottish shopping centre, with a distillery for anyone who wasn't necessarily interested in shopping or eating.

There was sound method to this plan. Just an hour north of both Edinburgh and Glasgow, Tullibardine could reasonably be incorporated into anyone's tourist route further north into the Highlands, or just treated as a day trip from either of Scotland's capitals.

As it is, 2.8 million people live within an hour's drive – as opposed to 600,000 for the very successful...

• By : Kate Patrick
• In : Contemporary Scotland
• Issue : 19
• Page : 58
• Words : 1,288