Wee Scotch Whisky Tales (2 page)

The reputation of the whisky was such that, even after it ceased production, several others used the name to promote their product, most notably the Ben Wyvis Distillery of Dingwall which operated from 1879 till 1926. And then the name Ferintosh was, like the whisky, sadly lost … or was it? In the last decade or so a new strain of
lactobacillus
has been identified in the whisky production process and it has been given, by some biochemist with a knowledge of whisky-distilling history, the designation …
lactobacillus ferintoshensis
. There are microbreweries on the Black Isle today, maybe one day we will have a boutique distillery producing a dram which revives the Ferintosh name?

2 A Riot Creates The Whisky Island

WHEN SCOTLAND AND England unified their parliaments in 1707, there was very little of what we would now call ‘whisky’ distilled in Scotland, apart from in scattered sma’ stills. The only major producer was the aforementioned Forbes of Culloden’s distillery at Ferintosh, where he was allowed to produce his
aqua vitae
tax-free and appears to have used a lot of corn in the production process as I outlined in the previous chapter. The national drinks were claret and wine for the upper classes, and tippeny ale for the lower orders; almost all malted grains were used for brewing, rather than for distillation, at that time. A convoluted process, in which malted barley was a key player, was to change this situation completely and establish whisky as Scotland’s ‘national drink’.

The Union was not popular in its early years, to say the least. Jacobites opposed it because it blocked the way to the return of the Stuarts, Presbyterians opposed it as it introduced toleration for non-Presbyterians in 1712 and most importantly, as a move to equalise Scottish and English taxes a malt tax was proposed in 1713 which was so unpopular that it contributed to a motion in parliament to repeal the Act of Union itself. This motion narrowly failed – and the imposition of the tax itself was postponed. However, in 1725 the London government came back with its malt tax proposal, though at a lower rate of 3d a barrel of beer brewed in Scotland against the English rate which was double that. Opposition to the tax amongst the populace was general, leading to a brewers’ strike in Edinburgh, and riots throughout the land, but nowhere was hostility more widespread than in Glasgow.

In June 1725 crowds assembled in the centre of the city and rang the town’s fire bell to summon forth support. Initially they molested the excisemen sent to collect the new tax, but then turned their attention to the local MP, Daniel (or Donald) Campbell, who was reputed – correctly – to have voted for the malt tax. Campbell was an exceedingly rich merchant capitalist who had in 1711-12 built the Shawfield Mansion in the centre of Glasgow, at the junction of the Trongate and Glassford Street. This was then the finest Palladian mansion in the city and possibly in Scotland. The crowd smashed the windows of the mansion and looted many of its contents.

The authorities called in the military to restore order, and Lord Deloriane’s Foot, commanded by one Captain Bushell, fired on the demonstrators, killing nine and wounding 16 of them – without having first read the Riot Act or having fired warning shots, as was legally required. This failed to restore order and the Glasgow magistrates ordered the troops to leave the city, subsequently charging Bushell with murder – a charge eventually dropped. The troops retreated towards Dumbarton Castle and were again attacked. Again they fired and again killed an undetermined further number of rioters. Finally General Wade, commander-in-chief of forces in Scotland, was sent to Glasgow with a much larger number of troops, including the Earl of Stair’s Dragoons, to quell the rioting. Wade was accompanied by the Lord Advocate, Duncan Forbes of Culloden (of untaxed Ferintosh fame covered in
Chapter 1
!) who exacted retribution for the riots. Several of the culprits were jailed, fined, whipped through the town or exiled for life.

Forbes also arrested Provost Millar and the rest of the town council for alleged complicity with the rioters. Though these charges were subsequently dropped the council was fined a total of almost £10,000 to cover the cost of the riots and was forced to sell off most of the city’s common lands to pay the fine. Much of the compensation went direct to Campbell of Shawfield, a total of more than £6,000 for his damages. However this can be seen as a reward for a loyal government supporter rather than valid compensation, as two separate estimates by tradesmen for repairs to the building (which was not demolished or burnt down as many stories state) came to a few hundred rather than thousands of pounds. Until its demolition in 1792 Shawfield Mansion remained the most luxurious dwelling in the city – so much so that Bonnie Prince Charlie stayed there in 1746 during his retreat to Culloden and fell for the charms of Clementina Walkinshaw. (Whilst he did so, Campbell of Shawfield, who had fled Glasgow, raised at his own expense a militia to fight the Jacobite army).

But to return to our story, one effect of the malt tax led to a decline in ale drinking in Scotland and an increased consumption of whisky – much of it produced from the illicit sma’ stills in the Highlands and smuggled south. ‘Whisky’ at this time was a term which covered a multitude of sins, and included any distillation made from any malted grain – or grain mixed with unmalted grain – and flavoured with herbs, raisins, spices and a variety of other ingredients to make it palatable. The emergence of a drink based on malted barley took longer to emerge, and again has a connection with our story of the malt tax.

With his fairly ill-gotten gains from the Shawfield Riots, Daniel Campbell procured the bulk of the purchase price for the island of Islay in the Inner Hebrides. He set about the process of agricultural improvement on the island, developing mining and other enterprises as well as introducing new methods of crop rotation and new crops, such as the higher yielding barley to replace the strain called ‘bere’. This led to the situation where tenant farmers who had a surplus of the grain could use it to produce the drink that was to become known as whisky. That this practice had become widespread in the 50 years after Campbell bought Islay is shown by the comments of the Revd Archibald Robertson of Kildalton parish in 1777:

Initially these were sma’ stills bubbling away for personal or local consumption, with a little smuggling sideline to the Lowlands. The Highland product, made from malted barley was considered to taste much better than Lowland whisky, generally made with other grains, and was in increasing demand. And by 1750 it was this drink that was generally known as whisky, and the term did not any longer apply to the rougher grain spirits flavoured like cordials.

At the same time another development took place which was of great importance and can be regarded as the first step towards making Islay – arguably – the malt whisky capital of the world. Campbell of Shawfield had died in 1753 and his estate had passed to his grandson, who carried on the process of economic development, most notably with the construction of the planned village of Bowmore in the 1760s. The new laird encouraged one Daniel Simson, a farmer at Bridgend who had done some small-scale distilling, to open a larger enterprise in the town, and – probably some time before 1779 – Bowmore Distillery opened. This was the first of a long and illustrious line which, after the Excise Act of 1823, basically doomed the sma’ stills and paved the way for large-scale distilleries; by the mid-19th century nine such distilleries were operating on the island.

However, the illicit tradition continued for many years afterwards. ‘Baldy Cladach’ was tenant of a remote croft at Cladach on the east coast of Islay, accessible only by a lengthy track from Ballygrant. A strong man, he was famed for being able to carry his own weight in sacked grain to Cladach from Ballygrant. The suspicious excisemen investigated and he was duly evicted from his holding, emigrating to Canada around 1850. Alhough his still was destroyed, his store of whisky was not and it is rumoured to be out there awaiting discovery yet.

By a circuitous route, the tax on the malt in beer had contributed to the eventual emergence of malt whisky. The rest, as they say, is history. It is also interesting that until the development of North Sea oil, the present-day opponents of the Union of 1707 were wont to argue that Scotland could be economically viable on the tax revenue – not of black oil but of the golden spirit. The tax receipts from Islay whisky alone are estimated at £500,000,000 annually. And it is further interesting – and reassuring – to note that, while the oil will not last forever, the whisky will.

3 The Whisky Wars in Scotland

THE PHRASE ‘ILLICIT distilling’ conjures up a picture of a Highland crofter, sitting patiently at his sma’ still, producing a modest drop of
usquebae
for friends and neighbours. And for the last two centuries that has been the basic reality of contraband whisky. But for almost a century before that, illicit whisky production was one of Scotland’s largest industries, and it was based far more in the North-east of Scotland, than in the Highlands. This is the almost forgotten period of the Whisky Wars, which raged from the middle of the 18th century until the 1820s. Ultimately it took the military resources of the British state, and a long, low-level counter-insurgency operation, to bring the Whisky Wars to an end.

The illicit whisky trade during this period spread like wildfire in the north-eastern upland plateau between the Highlands and the available markets in the Lowlands. By the 1780s it was estimated that 90% of all Scottish whisky sales were illicit, and an observer commented that the trade had ‘spread over the whole face of the country, where the face of an Exciseman is never seen’. There were over 200 active stills in Glenlivet in about 1800, and Tomintoul was described 15 years later as ‘a wild mountain village, where drinking, dancing and swearing went on all the time’. The Cabrach, to the east of Glenlivet, was another lawless area, again with a couple of hundred active stills. There was no comparable mass production in the Highland areas proper.

Suppressing the trade was especially difficult because many landlords connived with it, since the money it brought in ensured that their tenants could pay their rents, otherwise a difficulty due to the low crop yields of these marginal lands. Barley made into whisky was estimated to produce between five to ten times its economic yield as a food crop. In some kirks of the North-east at this time a portion of the gallery was known as the ‘smugglers’ loft’, where they would sit holding their heads high because they could easily pay their pew rent – and their farms rents as well.

THE BACKGROUND

Whisky has been distilled in Scotland from probably the 15th century, but by the middle of the 18th it had become the national drink. Distilleries had to be licensed by the state, and most of these legal distilleries were fairly large-scale. By law they had to have a minimum still capacity of 500 gallons. The problem was that after the Union, as a price for access to English colonial markets, Scots had to accept a share of England’s tax burden – a bargain which the Scots found unreasonable. As mentioned in
Chapter 2
, the imposition of malt tax caused the most resentment.

The malt tax, along with the high excise duty (which it was suspected was to protect English gin producers) on the spirit itself, meant that large distilleries which were open to excise inspection were at a major disadvantage, compared with small law-breaking distillers in remote areas who avoided all taxation. John Stein, a Lowland distiller, stated in 1797 that ‘owing to the interference of Highland spirits, we have been unable to find sales’. Stein and other large-scale distillers like the Haig family were paying seven shillings a gallon excise on their product and could not compete with the sma’ stills that were paying nothing.

For Robert Burns and many other Scots, whisky went not only with freedom, but with good health. One exciseman agreed with Burns, noting in 1786 that ‘the ruddy complexion and strength of these people is not owing to water-drinking, but to the
aqua vitae
.’ It should also be mentioned that until well into the 19th century, and even afterwards in country districts, whisky was the only painkiller available to most of the common people, who could ill-afford the legal but expensive opiates at the time. One doctor is recorded as asking a countryman what happened if any of his family were ill.

ORGANISATION OF THE TRADE

The illicit whisky smuggling trade was highly organised, and often ingenious methods were used. Women walking with their wares to market in neighbouring towns would acquire miraculous pregnancies – inflated bladders full of the whisky which they would deliver or sell to customers. Innocent-looking parties on coffin tracks, walking to the cemetery and resting awhile from the labour of carrying their burden, might well be over-refreshed – not from drowning their sorrows at the loss of the supposed deceased, but because the coffin held supplies of whisky for delivery to consumers.

But the main method of delivery of illicit whisky was a well-organised armed convoy. Once the amber dew had been distilled, it was poured into barrels (called ‘akers’) and these were set on panniers over a pony, which generally carried four five-gallon barrels. A long string of ponies was tied together, and the animals proceeded to walk, accompanied by 20 or 30 men, on the outward journey to their destination – then the men would ride back home on the empty animals. Accounts speak of how heavily armed the smugglers were, carrying cudgels, swords and pistols. The whisky convoy was accompanied by dogs, which would have been excellent as lookouts, picking up the sound and scent of any unwelcome persons along the way. The journey from the Cabrach or Glenlivet to the Mearns, Strathmore or the Laigh o’ Moray, was one that occupied two or three days’ or (as often as not) nights’ walking for the smugglers. Stealth was at least as important for the smugglers as speed, and they utilised the little-frequented whisky roads through and over the mountains.