A Stillhouse Built with Purpose

For the first time in more than half a century, The Dalmore has embarked on a landmark distillery expansion – a carefully considered transformation creating a reimagined home that reflects the complexity of our whisky making while honouring our royal heritage and the enduring legacy left by the Mackenzie family.

To ensure that we’re able to increase our production capacity when needed, additional stills were essential. We therefore commissioned Forsyths to build exact replicas of our existing stills – preserving the integrity and distinctness of our new make spirit and ensuring the distinctive character of The Dalmore Highland Single Malt is carried forward.

Based in Rothes, Scotland, Forsyths is one of the world’s leading coppersmiths, with a heritage dating back to the mid-19th century and a position at the forefront of distillation engineering since the company was founded in 1890. Having built around half of Scotland’s whisky pot stills, Forsyths has played a significant role in shaping the character and consistency of Scotch whisky through generations of specialist craftsmanship.

Now led by fourth-generation family member, Richard E. Forsyth, Forsyths is known for designing and building traditional copper pot stills using an age-old method of hand-hammering alongside advanced engineering practices to deliver bespoke and innovative distilling solutions to the spirits industry around the world.

Forsyths and The Dalmore share a long and closely connected history dating back to the years before the Second World War, when founder Alexander Forsyth first secured a contract to service The Dalmore distillery’s equipment.

In the late 1940s, Alexander’s eldest son, also named Alexander, became the distillery manager at The Dalmore, working for the owner, Hector ‘Hac’ Mackenzie, his former wartime officer. In the decades that followed, Forsyths continued its close collaboration with the distillery, installing four additional stills in the mid-1960s to double capacity to eight.

Richard Forsyth, the current chairman, recalls visiting The Dalmore distillery as a schoolboy with his father Ernest. In the days before modern ultrasound testing, Ernest would assess the stills by tapping them with a small hammer and listening for subtle changes in tone that indicated wear in the copper. On one particular visit, Hac appeared with a hammer of his own, and the two men happily tapped away together, the joy evident upon their faces.

The Dalmore’s asymmetrical stillhouse is deliberately engineered to shape the character of our low wines and new make spirit throughout distillation.

Each of our stills is fitted with boil balls to increase copper contact, helping to remove unwanted sulphur compounds during distillation. Our wash stills feature distinctive flat-topped heads with no swan necks: instead, the vapour travels through side outlets into long,winding lyne arms. The spirit stills, meanwhile, are fitted with prominent water jackets - or water coolers - around the heads and necks to encourage greater reflux for a more refined spirit.

These unique features within our stills were added with purpose, ultimately enabling our whisky makers to capture both brighter citrus notes and deeper malty richness within a single spirit style.

This spirit is then enriched through multi-cask maturation as it is moved between rare and exclusive casks from the world’s most prestigious wineries and bodegas, building complexity over time. Each cask is chosen to complement, contrast or enhance, adding a unique layer to the final composition.

At The Dalmore, all of our stills have copper boil balls extending from the main pot body, increasing copper contact to help remove unwanted sulphur compounds during distillation.

Our wash stills are unusual in that they have distinctive flat-topped heads with no swan neck. Instead, the vapour passes from side outlets into long, winding lyne arms. The spirit stills have prominent water jackets - or water coolers - around the heads and necks to encourage increased reflux, helping to produce a more refined spirit.

Commissioning new stills inevitably introduced an element of risk, particularly when our spirit’s character and consistency are so closely guarded. “It was crucial that from the moment the liquid first touched the copper, the equipment maintained the same characteristics as the existing stills,” says Shane Healey, Director of Distilling at The Dalmore.

There was no question that Forsyths were the natural partner for the task, bringing generations of expertise and an unrivalled understanding of The Dalmore’s stills and unique spirit profile. “The Dalmore stills have some very complex shapes and sizes, and we had to replicate these as closely as possible,” says Richard Forsyth.

Work started on the new stills at Forsyths’ Rothes fabrication facility, where each was traditionally hand-hammered with wooden mallets to shape and strengthen the copper. Maintaining a meticulous level of precision, the stills’ lyne arms were made to the exact dimensions of the originals, measured to the nearest millimetre from the top of the still to the condensers positioned beyond the external wall.

Consultant engineers Blyth & Blyth - who oversaw The Dalmore’s last expansion nearly 70 years ago – led the entire project, including the construction of the new stillhouse. Working alongside specialist building contractor Morrison Construction, work commenced on the stillhouse in the spring of 2023, with the new stills delivered from Forsyths in the spring of 2024.

The completed symphony of stills - arranged in a distinctive criss-cross formation - stands as a testament to Forsyths’ meticulously detailed and painstaking work. “We began distilling in January 2026 and already we’ve achieved the full character of our signature robust spirit in just under three months,” says Shane. “It’s a remarkable accomplishment and one rarely seen within the industry.”

“Forsyths really are masters in what they do,” says Shannon Jess, Global Brand Manager at The Dalmore. “We have been delighted to work with them on the building of the stills.”

The new stillhouse, designed by Threesixty Architecture, features a floor-to-ceiling fused-glass window by artist John Kenneth Clark. Facing south over the waters of the Cromarty Firth, it draws in natural light and reflects it back across the stillhouse, bathing the space in a warm whisky-palette of colour, creating a visually dramatic and uniquely introverted setting.