Built in the last years on the 19th century, Imperial is a distillery with a sadly chequered history, spending almost as much time in mothballs as it did distilling. Its longest period of production came between 1955 and 1985 under the ownership of DCL (now Diageo). Allied Distillers bought it in 1989, opening it again two years later, but only for another seven. It was under their tenure that the only distillery bottling of its single malt appeared, but thankfully a number of increasingly sought after independent releases like this have been produced over the years. Imperial was demolished in 2013 and the site now houses the new distillery, Dalmunach.