Glen Scotia

Region: Campbeltown

Owner: Loch Lomond Group (Exponent)

Founded: 1832

The Campbeltown region was once known as ‘The whisky capital of Scotland’ and allegedly was home to 30 odd distilleries. Certainly at the time of Alfred Barnard’s seminal visit in 1887, he visited 18 of them, but funnily enough not Glen Scotia, and here’s the rub, Glen Scotia appears to be the forgotten Campbeltown distillery.

Distilleries such as Argyll, Burnside, Glenside, Hazelburn, Longrow and Springside may have been lost to the mists of time, but Glen Scotia has kept on doing its business through the good times and the bad. Indeed, ask any whisky aficionado to name a distillery in the region and chances are that they will say Springbank, which in my opinion is a real shame.

Like many Scottish distilleries it has had a chequered past. When the distillery was built in 1832 by Steward, Galbraith & Co, it was simply named Scotia. It was subsequently sold to the West Highland Malt distillers (WHMD) in 1919, but by 1924 WHMD was bankrupt and of the six distilleries that made up the group, Glen Scotia was the last one in operation, however it was saved from the axe by one of the directors, Duncan MacCallum, although he only managed to keep it open for another four years.

It was reopened by MacCallum in 1931, but after allegedly losing his life savings to a scam he committed suicide by drowning himself in Campbeltown Loch and unsurprisingly the distillery closed once again. It is said that his ghost still haunts the distillery today and, well, there’s nothing like a good ghost story and tragedy to enthral the visitors is there!

The distillery was subsequently purchased by the Bloch Brothers, owners of Glengyle and Scapa in 1933, who put the Glen in Glen Scotia, I’m assuming that they wanted the distillery to sound more Scottish!? They eventually sold the distillery to Hiram Walker in 1954, who obviously couldn’t be bothered to do anything with it and promptly sold it to the blender A. Gillies & Co a year later. It does make you wonder why Walker bought the distillery in the first place.

The next forty odd years are marked by a number of takeovers and periods of silence. First Amalgamated Distillers Products (A|DP) buys A. Gillies & Co in 1970, splashes a load of cash on refitting the distillery and then closes it in 1984 due to the well documented downturn in the whisky market. Gibson International then took over ADP and resumed production in 1989, but only for a few years as Gibson was purchased by Glen Catrine Bonded Warehouses Ltd in 1994 and once again the distillery was mothballed.