About Clydeside Distillery
The Clydeside Distillery occupies the restored Pump House at Glasgow's former Queen's Dock, beside the River Clyde. It opened in 2017 as the city's first dedicated single-malt distillery for more than a century, placing new production inside a building directly connected with Glasgow's maritime and whisky-export history.
The project was developed by Morrison Glasgow Distillers, led by Tim Morrison and his family. Their whisky background includes brokerage, blending and former family ownership of Bowmore and Glen Garioch, but Clydeside is a new Lowland distillery rather than a revival of one of those older plants.
History
Queen's Dock was developed during the nineteenth-century expansion of Glasgow's shipping trade. The Pump House, completed in 1877, supplied hydraulic power to the dock entrance bridge. John Morrison of the engineering firm Morrison & Mason, an ancestor of the distillery's founders, worked on the dock construction, giving the modern project an unusual family connection to the site itself.
After the dock closed, the Pump House served several other purposes, including restaurant and visitor uses. Morrison Glasgow Distillers acquired it in 2011. Difficult ground conditions on the infilled dock delayed construction, but conversion work eventually began in 2016. The first distillation took place in November 2017 and the visitor centre opened later that month.
Clydeside's first single malt, Stobcross, followed in 2021. Its name recalls the estate and village displaced by the nineteenth-century dock development. The release marked the point at which the project moved from a visitor-accessible new-make distillery to a producer with mature Glasgow single malt of its own.
What makes it distinctive
The distillery uses water from Loch Katrine and Scottish barley. Its principal production is unpeated, although a short annual peated campaign has created a separate spirit used for the Fortnight range. Malt is milled on site before mashing and fermentation, and a pair of copper pot stills stands in a modern glass stillhouse overlooking the Clyde.
Clydeside describes its target as a light, fruit-forward Lowland spirit. Careful steam control and the shape and operation of the stills are used to favour clean fruit rather than a heavy, sulphury make. The distillery's production account also emphasises first-fill bourbon maturation for Stobcross, while other releases demonstrate sherry, wine and additional cask influences.
Whisky character and significance
Stobcross established the unpeated house style through orchard and tropical fruit, vanilla, citrus and spice. Fortnight shows that peat is a deliberate secondary strand rather than the definition of all Clydeside whisky. Natural colour and non-chill filtration are used for prominent releases, but the precise cask recipe should be checked for each bottling.
Visiting Clydeside Distillery
The visitor route combines the Dockside Story with an explanation of production and a tasting. This makes the industrial history more than a backdrop: visitors learn how whisky once moved through the Clyde docks before entering a working contemporary distillery. Current experience formats and accessibility arrangements should be checked directly rather than relying on fixed schedules reproduced elsewhere.
Location and surrounding area
The distillery is on Stobcross Road beside the SEC, Glasgow Science Centre and Riverside Museum area. It can be reached as part of a city visit without the long rural travel associated with many distilleries, while the Clyde, surviving dock structures and nearby shipbuilding heritage provide the wider historical setting.
- Whisky region
- Lowlands
- Location
- 100 Stobcross Road, Glasgow, G3 8QQ
- Visitor information
- Check the official website for current tours, tastings, access and booking arrangements.
Further information
Visit the official Clydeside Distillery website
Clydeside: official production process