Whisky Necromancers: Can the Dead Truly Rise Again?
Contents
Once, the lights went out in Port Ellen, Brora, and Rosebank. Their stills went cold, their names whispered reverently by collectors and dreamers. Now, decades later, the fires are lit once more.
The age of whisky necromancy is upon us.
The Resurrection
In 1983, Scotland saw a culling of stills — distilleries shuttered, warehouses emptied, ghosts created. For years, their remaining bottles became relics of lost craftsmanship.
Then, the impossible began.
Diageo rebuilt Port Ellen on Islay and Brora in the Highlands; Rosebank, the “Queen of the Lowlands,” returned in 2024 with spirit once again flowing from new copper.
But here’s the question: when a distillery is reborn, is it truly the same distillery?
The Distillery of Theseus
Philosophers once asked: if you replace every plank of a ship, is it still the same vessel?
So too in whisky. When a distillery is rebuilt — new stills, new water lines, new staff, often new ownership — what remains of the original?
Port Ellen’s new stills are precision replicas, modeled on archived blueprints. Brora’s warehouse stones were scrubbed and re-laid. Rosebank’s triple stills were re-engineered to match the originals’ quirks.
But can a distillery’s soul be copied?
Every spirit is shaped by invisible forces: the age of the copper, the yeast strain, the ghosts in the rafters.
The revived sites may wear the old names, but like the Ship of Theseus, they are interpretations, not continuations — homages animated by modern alchemy.
The Glenturret Paradox
Consider Glenturret — Scotland’s self-proclaimed oldest working distillery. It has changed ownership, equipment, and methods countless times since the 18th century. It doesn’t share the site with the original distillery it draws its name from. The current site doesn’t even share a still with the previous distillery, only a handfull of walls.
By the logic of Theseus, even Glenturret is a new creature wearing ancient skin. Yet somehow no one questions or challenges this authenticity. Tradition in whisky it seems is not about material continuity, but storytelling and stewardship — the unbroken belief that the craft endures through change.
Wolfburn and the New Ghosts
Now consider Wolfburn. The original distillery, founded in 1821 near Thurso, disappeared by the mid-1800s. Its ruins were rediscovered, and a new Wolfburn was built in 2013 just a few hundred meters away.
Is it a resurrection or a reincarnation? The new Wolfburn shares nothing physical with its ancestor — yet it honors the same place, the same northern spirit. In the end, perhaps the line between rebirth and reinvention doesn’t matter. What counts is the quality of the spirit in the glass. Whisky drinkers love a good marketing spin, but what really counts is the spirit.
The Necromancers’ Dilemma
Distillers are now archaeologists, resurrecting names from the graveyard of Scotch. But every rebirth is also a rewriting — a delicate balance between homage and innovation. Maybe the question isn’t whether these distilleries can truly live again, but whether we, as drinkers, want them to. We chase ghosts, but what if what we really seek is connection — to time, to place, to memory. Or maybe just a really good story to go with our whisky?