John Duff had previously owned the Fife Arms Inn at Lhanbryde and managed Glendronach distillery. He formed John Duff and Co with H Mackay, Charles Shirres, Alexander Grigor Allan and George Thomson and the company founded the Glenlossie whisky distillery in 1876. The Glenlossie distillery lies south of Elgin, in the village of Thomshill. Twenty years later, H Mackay became the manager following John Duff’s departure to Longmorn which he established with Charles Shirres and George Thomson.
In 1919, Distillers Company Ltd acquired the Glenlossie distillery and just over a decade later transferred the distillery to Scottish Malt Distillers. During the 1960s, substantial advances were carried out, the distillery was converted from steam to electric power and in 1962 a further two stills were added, bringing the total to six. Today the distillery is mid-sized with a total annual capacity of 2.14m litres. Following the amalgamation of Distillers Company Ltd, Glenlossie is under Diageo ownership.
The site on which the distillery stands also includes a substantial dark grains plant which processes pot ale and draff into cattle fodder. There is also ample storage space, Glenlossie’s ten warehouses can hold as much as 200,000 casks, and accordingly, other Diageo-owned whisky distilleries have been afforded storage here. There have been several independent bottlings of Glenlossie single malt Scotch whisky, in addition to the official house bottling. The 1990-released ten year-old.