The oldest distillery

Thursday, 19th November 2009

Charles MacLean delves into history to discover which distillery can truly claim to be the oldest in Scotland

Yesterday I was writing tasting notes for two malts distilled in the 1950s and bottled in the 1960s – a Glenfiddich and a Dufftown-Glenlivet – and their flavours, very different from their contemporary equivalents (richer, drier, smokier), set me musing on how whisky has changed over the decades. In turn this led to thoughts about the oldest surviving whisky distilleries, and when I scratched below the innocent surface of this question I found that answers are not as straightforward as they might be.

Last year was the 400th anniversary of ‘the world’s oldest distillery’, Bushmills in Co. Antrim. The claim is founded on the fact that, in April 1608, Sir Thomas Phillips was granted a license by the Lord Deputy of Ireland (the King’s representative) ‘to make, drawe and distill such and soe great quantities of aquavite, usqubagh and aqua composita as he or his assinges shall think fit… within the territorie called the Rowte, in co. Antrim.’

Incontrovertible? The problem is that the Rowte is a broad territory, embracing all the north-western part of Co. Antrim – the town of Bushmills did not even exist in 1608…

I encountered similar problems in Scotland.

Glenturret Distillery at ‘The Hosh’, Crieff (Perthshire) – now the site of The Famous Grouse Experience – loudly claims to be the oldest, ‘founded in 1775’. Well, er, yes but… There are apparently references to illicit distilling around the Hosh at this time – indeed, there are mentions of same in 1717 (so why not choose the earlier date, I wonder?) – but very many distilleries in Scotland were built on sites of earlier illicit ventures, and the Hosh is a district, not a specific site… My 1854 Imperial Gazeteer of Scotland mentions many industries, but no distillery.

Until modern times, it was believed that the water used for making whisky had almost mystical properties. So if a ‘smuggler’ produced exceptional hooch, it was generally believed to be on account of the water quality. For this reason, many legal distilleries were built on former smugglers’ dens, among the earliest are Lagavulin and Ardbeg, both on the rugged southern coast of the Isle of Islay.

The great Victorian ‘distillery bagger’, Alfred Barnard, was told when he visited Lagavulin in the 1880s, that around 1742 there were ‘ten small and separate smuggling bothies [around the bay] for the manufacturing of “moonlight”… and were all subsequently absorbed into one establishment.’ The ‘one establishment’ was founded in 1816 by John Johnston, the tenant of Lagavulin farm, and today makes one of the world’s most popular malt whiskies.

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