Glenmorangie has existed as a distillery since 1843 when William Matheson bought a license to make whisky on the site of a brewery located near the Tarlogie Springs in Ross-shire in the highlands of Scotland. Matheson bought two second-hand gin stills to make his spirit, and the distillery is famous for having the tallest stills in Scotland, although these days there are eight stills rather than just two. In 1918 the distillery was bought by Macdonald and Muir, who steered Glenmorangie through the diffiicult inter-war period when the combination of Prohibition and the Great Depression made conditions very difficult for the industry as a whole. Having survived, Glenmorangie went on to flourish, doubling the number of stills to four in 1977 and again to eight in 1990, the year after the company had secured the future of its own water source by buying 650 acres of land around the Tarlogie Springs.
