Balvenie Castle stands near Dufftown, Scotland—originally built in the late 13th century by the Comyn Earls of Buchan as a formidable stone enclosure with curtain walls and a deep defensive ditch . After Robert the Bruce’s campaign in 1308, the Comyns were ousted and Balvenie passed into obscurity until the early 1400s, when the powerful Black Douglases took control and likely expanded the domestic buildings . In 1455, James II confiscated Douglas lands and granted Balvenie to his kinsman, John