Origin & History
Est. 1887 · Dufftown, Speyside, Scotland
Built by Hand. Stone by Stone. Dream by Dream.
How one man's twenty-year ambition — and nine children — built the world's most awarded single malt distillery
In the summer of 1886, William Grant gathered his nine children on a hillside in Dufftown, Speyside, and began building a distillery with his bare hands. He had spent twenty years nurturing a single dream — to make the best dram in the valley. Stone by stone, his family built what would become Glenfiddich, Gaelic for Valley of the Deer. On Christmas Day 1887, the first spirit fell from their copper stills. It was the beginning of something the whisky world had never seen before.
More than 130 years later, Glenfiddich remains exactly what William Grant built — a family distillery, still entirely family owned, still operated by his descendants, still using the same spring water from the Robbie Dhu that William chose in 1887. In a spirits industry dominated by corporations and conglomerates, that independence is not just a selling point. It is the foundation of everything that makes Glenfiddich extraordinary.