Opened in 1975, Pittyvaich was one of the shortest-lived distilleries ever built on Speyside; the innocent victim of industry restructuring, it closed in 1993 through no fault of its whisky and has long since been demolished. Unsurprisingly, its pleasing single malt has never been widely available, though it has been proven to age well; none younger than 25 years of age remains. Most closed distilleries have produced for decades, even centuries before their closure, but Pittyvaich lived for a mere eighteen years. The name is Gaelic and may refer to an early dwelling on the site, a ‘farmstead at the birch wood’. The distillery was, however, an impressive and ultramodern state of the art building, built around stills that were an exact replica of those at Dufftown, then its sister distillery. Pittyvaich, it was said, was designed around its plant and not, as is often the case with older distilleries, vice versa.