The distillery was founded in 1879 by James Fleming,
who shrewdly built it on the site of St Drostan's Well, thus securing
forever this priceless source of pure spring water. When the journalist
Alfred Barnard visited Aberlour in the 1880s, as part of his exhaustive
survey of Scottish whisky distilleries, he described James Fleming's
new establishment as a "perfect modern Distillery".
In 1898 a fire destroyed several of the distillery
buildings and most of the whisky stocks. Under the supervision
of Scotland's foremost designer of whisky distilleries, Charles
Doig of Elgin, the Aberlour Distillery was largely rebuilt.
Over the past 100 years, with modernisation and
technology, the landscape of the distillery has inevitably altered,
though many of the original features are still there and the traditional
working character of the place remains unchanged. The latest addition
is the new Visitors Centre - the Fleming Rooms - named after the
founder of the distillery.
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