Exclusive releases to celebrate the Open Day.

Inverclyde based Ardgowan Distillery is delighted to announce full details of the many visitor attractions available at its annual open day being held this Saturday 7 September from 12pm to 5pm. The event offers an afternoon of family-friendly activities with no entry fee or tickets required and dogs welcome along with their owners.

 Key highlights include the food village featuring local suppliers, an afternoon of live music, family entertainment activities, charity stalls, competitions and prize draws and of course, whisky tastings led by the Ardgowan team.  For whisky aficionados, there is an opportunity to invest in your own cask of whisky and to see the progress on the distillery site which is expected to open in Spring 2025. 

Visitors are encouraged to travel to the event using public transport options linking with the free shuttle bus services from Inverkip and Gourock train station (via McInroy’s Point). For those travelling by car, there will be a park and ride facility with ample space for the anticipated guests (full details of all activities and transport arrangements detailed below).

Following the success of last year’s inaugural open day event which attracted almost five thousand visitors, Ardgowan will launch two exclusive malt whiskies this weekend. The specially selected whisky bottles will be signed by the company’s Master Whisky maker Max McFarlane and can be purchased at the Open Day.   Whisky lovers can meet Max at the Open Day to hear more about the exclusive releases. 

The first new release is the Inverdarach “Ardgowan Open Day 2024” which is a 2013 vintage Highland Single Malt bottled at 10 years old (RRP £79.99. Whisky maker Max McFarlane has selected four first fill sherry hogsheads to be married together, creating a whisky that is wonderfully sherried without masking the original distillery character. 

Bottled at 56%, the tasting notes describe the nose as ‘rich complex black cherries, heather honey, teak oil and roast hazelnuts’ with the palate that is ‘full and intense with oat biscuits dipped in dark chocolate and notes of old bookshelves’. The finish is ‘long and lingering, light tannins, sweet black tea and cigar smoke.’ 

The second release is an Inverdarach Glenallachie 16-year-old Single Malt, a classic 100% sherry matured cask given a very subtle twist with ten months aging in an ex-Islay hogshead (RRP £160).

Bottled at 54.2% the tasting notes describe the nose as ‘spiced apple, baked plums, bitter chocolate and a suggestion of smoke’, a palate with ‘smouldering heather, pipe tobacco, ripe cherries and hint of salty breeze’ and the finish that is ‘complex: more chocolate and dried fruit.’  

A limited quantity of the new releases will also be available from Saturday 7th September from the following specialist whisky retailers - Robbie’s Drams, The Whisky Room, Geraldo’s of Largs, Master of Malt and Aberdeen Whisky Shop.

With construction of the privately owned start-up distillery in the final stages, Ardgowan’s £20 million “Cathedral of Whisky” is expected to create almost fifty jobs for the local area and on completion will have the capacity to produce up to one million litres of premium whisky a year. The site on the historic Ardgowan Estate near Inverkip, thirty miles west of Glasgow also features a gin distillery and visitor centre.