Glen Grant No 2 at Rothes Station, 1923 – Source: British LibraryThe story of Caperdonich was often told and should be well known by now. I also have written quite some lines about the ugly duckling and about the resurrection in 1965 already – corrections of inaccurate details of other depictions of my favorite distillery are a nice side effect. But where, how and when did the distillery actually originate? There is only meagre and, in many cases, uncertain information for this.
It can often be read that whisky has been produced in the building of the later Caperdonich distillery since 1897 or, alternatively, since 1898. I do not want to expatiate on the correct year at this point, I would rather like to start much earlier with my quest for the origin. More precisely in 1840, when the brothers John and James Grant, after they were able to gain valuable first experiences with the legal distilling of whisky in Aberlour, decided to establish their first own distillery in Rothes: Glen Grant.
The location chosen for Glen Grant actually offered good conditions for the distillation of whisky. The land around Rothes ensured a regular supply of barley and peat, and the proximity to the River Spey and the port in Garmouth offered fair opportunities for transporting goods. However, the brothers quickly realised that further growth was only possible with even better conditions for transport. The railway was to be the solution.
At that time, distillery owners were generally very interested in the railway and often had financial interests in railway companies. The only problem for Glen Grant was that it was far away from any rail connection in the region in its early years.
James Grant, co-founder of Glen GrantAs early as 1841, James Grant campaigned for a railway line between Elgin and the port of the city of Lossiemouth, the Morayshire Railway. This line was finally put into operation in 1852 after overcoming quite some initial obstacles. However, the connection to Rothes was still missing. This came with a detoured single track line via Orton in 1858, at the same time, when Rothes station was built with a small goods yard west of the track; close to the spot where Glen Grant would distill whisky a few decades later. The direct line from Elgin to Rothes (with an extension to Craigellachie in the south) was not completed until 1862, with the Grants subsidising the construction of this section with £4500 (today around 530.000 €).
Since there are no satisfying maps of Rothes available prior to 1871, I can unfortunately not give a more precise answer to the question of when Station Street was built parallel to the main street in Rothes, New Street. It must have been between 1858 and 1871. The same applies to the construction of the building that was to house the later extension of Glen Grant’s distillery on Station Street. There are no maps available between 1871 and 1894. In 1871, the building did not exist. The revised but not very detailed map from 1894 is the first indication of a building at the north-east end of Station Street.
1894 was still a long time before the alleged commissioning of the distillery extension in 1897/98. If you want assume that the building was built by Glen Grant, the question would be, why a distilling company would have a potential distillery building stay empty for 3 years or more during a time of a whisky boom as in the 1890s? Three newspaper articles from that time can provide an answer to that.
The first article in the Elgin Courant from May 1899 contains some interesting lines about the death of a man, originally a grain merchant, who bought Macallan in 1868 (and sold it to Roderick Kemp in 1892) and founded Glenrothes with three partners in 1876 as well as Glenspey with another partner in 1882. His name is James Stuart.
In 1894-95, in conjunction with Mr James Bowie, his late manager at Macallan, and Mr James Milne, he built and carried on successfully the Morayshire Malting Company at Rothes Station
The second article in the Northern Scot from June 1896 provides the missing piece of the puzzle, connecting the building at the north-east end of Station Street in Rothes with the distillery of J. & J. Grant.
The Morayshire Malting Company have sold their Maltings in Station Street to Messrs J. & J. Grant, of Glengrant Distillery, by private bargain. The price paid is, we believe, about £5000
However, the last article from May 1893, also published in the Elgin Courant, dates the origin of the building a little further back in time than the first article about James Stuart would suggest. Unfortunately, I have not (yet) been able to find any older records about the Morayshire Malting Company in Rothes to be more specific.
Mr Milne now severs his connection with Macallan. He has been the late distiller’s clerk for six years. He now takes the place of acting manager of the Morayshire Malting Company. This company has started building at Rothes, and hope to make malt before the next distillery season
So, let’s briefly summarise the newspaper articles and the first findings on the origins of the later Caperdonich distillery:
The Grants did not build the building in which their distillery extension was to be located. It was built around 1893 by the Morayshire Malting Company and served as maltings in the first few years. However, its location between Station Street and the train station and just a stone’s throw from the original distillery buildings made it interesting enough for J. & J. Grant to buy it in June 1896 for £5000 (today around 660.000 €).
As the undetailed map from 1894 shows, the Morayshire Malting Company’s building was sized rather small. It bears no comparison to the building shown on the next available map from 1902. On top of the hefty purchase price the Grants must have dug deep into their pockets to turn the maltings into a distillery. But why that, when the existing distillery could have been expanded for less money? The investment can hardly be justified by purchasing the building itself, but rather by its location.
Unfortunately, unfortunately, unfortunately, the building plans from 1896, which are supposed to describe this specific conversion, got lost in the Moray Council archives.
Source: National Library of Scotland, CC-BY (NLS)
There exists an agreement between the Moray County Council and J. & J. Grant from November 1896 reporting that Glen Grant was allowed to install a pipe 25 feet above New Street. This should be used to transport new make produced in the extension to the old part of the distillery; a first mention of the famous “whisky pipe” in Rothes.
But this agreement does not mean that the extension of Glen Grant also started operating in 1896 or – after conversion of the maltings and purchase of the entire distillery equipment – perhaps in 1897. A report from the Rothes Police Commission from March 1898 has been preserved, in which James Cumming, manager of Glen Grant at the time, was allowed to connect the distillery extension to the old water supply for an annual fee of £5. This agreement was to come into force on May 29, 1898 (Whitsunday).
As it appears difficult to distill without water, there was no new make distilled at the new distillery before Pentecost 1898. If I have understood the report correctly, I thus commit myself to Glen Grant #2 being commissioned in 1898. This also coincides with the year Dennis Malcolm remembered.
It is, though, much more difficult to find information about the distillery expansion for the time after 1898. Many questions remain unanswered. For example: Where did the stills and other equipment for the new facility come from? How much could be distilled there? How long did distilling continue after the Pattison Crisis? And were the Pattisons actually the reason for the closure, as it is claimed regularly?
Stills were certainly not available for purchase at every corner during the whisky boom of the time and the construction of several other distilleries in the area (Aultmore, Benriach, Glendullan, Speyburn…). Their delivery must have taken a little lead time, especially since Glen Grant had special requests: they wanted to produce a similar new make in the expansion to that from the existing stills.
That they obviously did not stick to this plan may be an indication of the difficulties in obtaining suitable stills at the time. It seems less likely to me that the Grants were not aware of the importance of the equipment for the taste of the new make. In any case, identical raw materials were used at both facilities, but the stills had some differences in shape, particularly in the neck area. Likewise, at Glen Grant, the new make from one of the two pairs of stills was cooled in worm tubs. The expansion used condensors only.
Perhaps there was already a collaboration between Glen Grant and Robert Willison’s Morayshire Copper and Brass Works in Rothes, where in the 1890s a certain Alexander Forsyth worked as apprentice, learning, among other things, to manufacture copper stills?
Willison and his competitors were certainly very busy manufacturing stills in and around Rothes at this time. Here is a brief (and not exhaustive) overview of when they (approximately) delivered to the various projects:
- Robert Willison (Alloa & Rothes)
Glenisla (1892), Longmorn (1894), Speyside (1895), Auchinblae (1896), Ardmore (1898), Millburn (expansion 1899) - Stewardson & Co (Edinburgh & Elgin)
Glenfarclas (expansion 1897), Tamdhu (1897), Glendullan (1898), Knockando (1899) - John Miller & Co (Glasgow)
Convalmore (1894), Parkmore (1896), Glen Cowdor (1897), Glen Tauchers (1898), Speyburn (1898)
Conclusions about the capacity of the equipment can be drawn from the planning application for the re-commissioning of the old distillery in 1964. Major Douglas Mackessack wrote that it was planned to distill 7.800 gallons of alcohol per week (approx. 35.500 litres). Since the building still housed the same stills as around the turn of the century, the original capacity should have been within the same range.
There are only indications to answer the question about the “how long”. As Surveyor Jackson mentioned in an answer to the planning application in 1964 that Glen Grant #2 was only active one or two years after it was commissioned (1898… you might remember). In other words, its stills remained cold from 1900 at the latest. In a newspaper article in The Scotsman from 1967, a closure in 1901 is mentioned. However, one should be cautious with this statement, because the same article states that the distillery began operations in 1897. So here we are still in the dark, while at least the often – and obviously incorrectly – cited year 1902 can be archived vertically for good.
Finally, in the “Wine and Spirit Trade Records” from January 1962, there is a surprising answer to the last question: No, the Pattisons were not the (actual) reason for the closure of Glen Grant #2. In general, distilleries in Speyside and in the Highlands were far less struck by the consequences of the Pattison Crisis than those in the Lowlands, as can be read in the few newspaper articles that had been published about this subject in Speyside and its surrounding areas around this time.
Instead, the “Trade Records” point out that the new make from the new stills – though it was good – did not meet the standards of Glen Grant. It simply tasted different to the original. It was assumed that it could not be sold under the name “Glen Grant” for this reason. After the initial disappointment, attempts were made for another year or two to improve the result – probably also by short maturation in casks -, but in the end it was decided to close down the extension.
Regardless a closure in 1900 or in 1901, the question remains whether whisky from Glen Grant #2 ever left the distillery premises. Sources available today do not give reason to believe that the new facility ran on full capacity for a longer time. If Glen Grant was not satisfied with the quality of the new make, they certainly did not fill too many casks with it. And if they did so, then only for the purpose of testing during the short operating time of the facility, but not with the intention of selling this whisky on a larger scale.
And if this assumption is correct, I am almost inclined to say that the origin of Caperdonich was not in 1898. I would rather see it when the buildings were rebuilt in 1965. You can distill a lot, but you also need to be able to sell the whisky successfully after it has matured. And only then a whisky distillery becomes a whisky distillery.