The Cairn Distillery

Gordon & MacPhail, founded in Elgin in 1895 and owned by the Urquhart family for five generations, announced plans in May 2018 to build a new distillery and visitor centre at Craggan, near Grantown-on-Spey on the River Spey. The announcement was remarkable: the company had been maturing and bottling Scotch for over a century without ever building their own distillery from scratch, and the project represented an investment of significant scale in the future of the business.

Construction took place between 2020 and 2022, with the architectural brief emphasising integration with the Cairngorms National Park landscape. The resulting building — a striking contemporary structure of natural materials designed by Sutherland Hussey Harris — won the RIBA Scotland award in 2022, recognising architectural excellence. The distillery name was revealed in November 2020. First spirit ran from the stills in July 2022, a date described by the company as "a landmark moment" for Gordon & MacPhail. The distillery features a five-star visitor experience with tours, tastings, and The Gathering restaurant serving Scottish produce.

While the single malt from The Cairn will not be released until the mid-2030s, Gordon & MacPhail developed the bridging brand CRN57° — a blended malt Scotch whisky named for the latitude of the distillery (57° north) — to give customers an early taste of the house flavour direction.

The Cairn Distillery is located near Grantown-on-Spey at approximately 57°N latitude in the Cairngorms National Park, drawing water from the River Spey catchment. Production details including still sizes and annual capacity have not been publicly disclosed. The distillery is designed for high-quality, small-batch production consistent with Gordon & MacPhail's maturation philosophy — the company's reputation rests on extraordinarily long-aged expressions from casks managed with exceptional care. First casks from The Cairn are expected to reach the early single malt release age by the late 2020s, with the main product launch anticipated in the mid-2030s.

No mature single malt whisky is yet available from The Cairn; the first release is not expected until the mid-2030s. The bridging brand CRN57° is a blended malt Scotch whisky created to give customers an early sense of the house flavour direction — it draws on Gordon & MacPhail's unmatched reserves of aged whisky from across Scotland and reflects the team's philosophy of elegance, balance, and complexity. The Cairn's own spirit character will only be fully knowable once the first single malt is released.

The Cairn offers a five-star visitor experience in a prize-winning architectural setting within the Cairngorms National Park. Tours and distillery experiences are available. The Gathering restaurant on-site serves Scottish produce. Online shop at shop.thecairndistillery.com. Physical shop on-site. Located near Grantown-on-Spey, Speyside. For current hours, booking, and experience details, see thecairndistillery.com.