It’s pronounced GlenMorangie, like orangey. That’s something that people get wrong a lot. Sometimes it’s good to know about these kind of things.
On a drizzly summer afternoon in Inverness, the gateway to the Highlands, it takes an hour to drive to Glenmorangie House—HQ. The skyline is a postcard blur of beautiful Scotland: green fields full of cows, heather in vivid purple clinging to the roadside, a flash of still grey water from a distant loch.
The name itself means ‘Valley of Tranquility’ in Gaelic, and it’s definitely tranquil. They’ve been making whisky here since 1843, when William Matheson and his wife Anne set about building a small distillery that has since grown to be one of the country’s most famous exports, which is some feat when you consider the location, a distant corner of Ross-shire. Rolling glens, a wide open sky, a windswept coastline and not too much else.
Anyway, Harrison Ford. It probably comes as no surprise to find out that he’s a certified Whisky Guy, which made him an ideal fit as a collaborator. “Harrison wanted to get properly involved,” says distillery manager Ed Thom, who along with master distiller Dr. Bill Lumsden, worked with the actor on his own special edition bottle. “He’s very specific about what he likes,” says Thom. “He wanted it to be smooth with a little bit of bite, much like Harrison himself. So that’s exactly what we created. You can try the results for yourself.”
An amiable Glaswegian with a sharp turn of phrase, we meet Thom at the distillery for a bit of a tour and tasting session. That old farmhouse from the 1900s has grown into an immaculate cluster of buildings in brick and shimmering glass, the centrepiece is called the Lighthouse, a modern structure and architectural fever dream that houses 20-metre-high copper stills—the tallest ins Scotland—that glint in the daylight. This isn’t a dingy back garden operation. They use hard, mineral-rich water (unusual, apparently) drawn from the nearby Tarlogie Springs, located in the bucolic wooded hills surrounding the distillery.
After lots of oohs and aahs, and even a few woahs! We’re led through to the tasting room, which is particularly exciting because it means you get to try loads of delicious whisky in the Highlands on an empty stomach before lunch. Surrounded by old barrels that have been sourced from as far afield as Appalachia, Thom and his team run us through a range of Glenmorangie’s offerings. Harrison’s whisky, with that distinctive bite and a touch of citrus and toasted bread (I took some notes), was aged in bourbon barrels along with toasted Portuguese red wine casks. You can see why the big man was happy to have his name on the bottle. I ask for another, please. There’s also a superb 25-year-old sampler, which is definitely worth seeking out.
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Being a big Hollywood star, Ford also played a leading role in Glenmorangie’s latest campaign, a series of short films directed by Joel Edgerton that serves as a slightly meta, and actually very funny, look-at-what-it’s-like-to-be Harrison Ford acting in a whisky advert in the Highlands, featuring time constraints, inappropriate footwear, kilts and kicking back by the fire with a dram of course.
As Ford himself said of the whole endeavour, “I’ll leave the whisky making to you guys and I’ll take care of the acting part.”
