Stillhouse Stories--Tunroom Tales

by Gavin D. Smith

  No two single malt whiskies are identical, even if, as in the case of Glen Mhor and Glen Albyn, the distilleries producing them share a source of malted barley, water and casks in which to mature the spirit itself. The principal variable in this case was the stills, and Rodney maintains that, ‘The size did not matter, but the shape altered the final texture of the distillate. Glen Mhor’s stills were dumpy and as a result produced the heavier, robust malt it was famous for. Glen Albyn’s on the other hand, were slender, bulbous vessels which subsequently made a lighter-nosed malt. No Glen Albyn had been bottled as a single malt since the Second World War, or, indeed, during Mr Birnie’s term of office.

  ‘Both Glen Mhor and Glen Albyn distilleries produced an intriguing and contrasting pair of malts. The former was a classic, heavily perfumed whisky and the latter much lighter and less aromatic. Glen Albyn was bottled as single malt for the Italian market which appreciated the care-free nature of the whisky. But after the Second World War Glen Albyn was not seen for forty years, and now only small stocks are becoming available in this century. Glen Mhor, on the other hand, was bottled consistently as ten-year-old until 1973 when the DCL withdrew it from the market for three years. The Glen Mhor malt re-appeared in 1976 as an eight-year-old under a different label, with mauve livery as opposed to the peat-brown original.’

  We tend to think that the legacy of over-production which led to the closure of more than 20 distilleries during the 1980s, and accounted for both Glen Albyn and Glen Mhor, was not recognised until around 1980, but Rodney reveals that this was certainly not the case so far as William Birnie, for one, was concerned.

  ‘He compiled extensive tables on consumption and production of potable spirits worldwide,’ says Rodney. ‘His tables of these statistics were publicised annually in the Daily Express. During the 1960s, Mr Birnie indicated to the trade that there were serious signs of over-production, but his counterparts observed him as over-sensitive and pessimistic. He told me personally in May 1970 that no-one would listen to his predictions and that various distilleries in the Scottish Highlands would close.’

  By the time that Glen Albyn and Glen Mhor met their ultimate fate they were wholly-owned by the DCL, which already controlled 43.5% of Mackinlays & Birnie Ltd, through its John Walker & Sons subsidiary, with Walker having merged with DCL in 1925, along with Buchanan-Dewar Ltd. The distilling licences for the Inverness distilleries were subsequently held by DCL’s Scottish Malt Distillers Ltd (SMD) subsidiary.

  Nineteen seventy-two had seen DCL make a successful bid to acquire all the issued ordinary share capital of Mackinlays & Birnie Ltd other than the proportion it already held through John Walker & Sons Ltd of Kilmarnock. Mackinlay McPherson Ltd (a subsidiary of Scottish & Newcastle Breweries Ltd) owned 10.9%, while the balance was held by 11 members of the Birnie family and 14 members of the Mackinlay family.

  The offer put a value of £765,000 on Mackinlays & Birnie, and Rodney maintains that, ‘It was welcomed by the directors because, they stated, the company had experienced difficulty in recent years: “The number of outlets for Mackinlays & Birnie’s fillings has decreased due to greater integration within the industry and it is felt that this trend would continue.” DCL, on the other hand, was ready to use the firm’s spare productive capacity.’

  This situation was not to last, however, and Rodney recalls that, ‘During the latter half of 1982 the stark realities occurred as prophesied twenty years previously by the late William Birnie, who died in 1973, aged eighty-three years. Over-production had reached acute proportions in 1981 and it was clear that there was no alternative for the future of the two Muirtown distilleries. The last distillation was on 8th March 1983, allowing nearly twelve weeks’ notice for closure. The day of 31st May 1983 is deeply imprinted on our minds as the distilleries closed. Bitterness was evident and despondency was prevalent, but to show their affection for their workmates a former stillman [Duncan McDougal] wrote this verse as a reminder of many happy distilling hours.

  The Distilleries are closing – that is the sorry news,

  As Birnie had predicted – there’s a glut of booze.

  The workers at Glen Albyn and also at Glen Mhor

  Really were dumbfounded – shocked right to the core.

  Summoned to the Stillhouse to hear the Managers say,

  ‘It’s the end of the road for us – we close at the end of May.’

  No doubt there were some murmurs and questions coming fast.

  There was substance in those rumours – they’ve come true at last.

  So ends an era of forty years, no less,

  When Glen Albyn was a suburb of the town of Inverness.

  If these grey walls could speak, what a story they could tell

  Of the many varied incidents that happened in ‘The Stell'.

  The roaring of the boiler is a thing of the past,

  And the mash going in on Tuesday has got to be the last.

  No more you’ll hear the Malties cry, with an excuse to make you weep,

  ‘Can’t give you a hand just now lads – We’re taking down a steep.’

  Everything is silent – the machinery is still.

  No more loads of barley, no grist for the mill.

  The Distillers Co may smile ‘cos stocks are abundant,

  But that is little comfort to folk who are redundant.’

  Rodney goes on: ‘However, worse was yet to follow. Management in its infinite wisdom chose to operate the remaining distilleries for storage purposes only. The whisky was drawn from bond, not to be replenished, and the emptying warehouses were rendered obsolete.’

  During 1986, DCL was the subject of a hostile and hugely controversial takeover by Guinness plc, and Rodney remembers that, ‘When the bitter struggle was over between Guinness and DCL it was hoped that they would mothball the closed distilleries for some years to come. But the final blow arrived in October 1986, when the building developers moved in.’ Today, Glen Mhor and Glen Albyn have disappeared without trace, demolished to make way for car parking and a retail park.

  ‘There was a terrific air of grief and frustration at the demise of two valuable Inverness institutions,’ recalls Rodney. ‘The anguish was exacerbated by the fact that William Birnie had given repeated warnings from the 1950s onwards that whisky production should be stabilised carefully to prevent over-production.’

  Musing on the many distillery closures of the 1980s, Rodney talks of ‘General apathy and mismanagement,’ claiming that, ‘the blenders refused to believe that one person could forecast the future of the malt whisky industry.’

  Despite it being four decades since he worked at Glen Albyn and Glen Mhor, he retains an obvious affection for the places and the people associated with them. ‘It is always a tragedy when a conventional era reaches the end of its cycle,’ he declares. ‘The fact that people thereafter lose their identities within their own workplaces is an endemic, depressing situation. The vital community spirit, where individuals could express their concerns and pleasures amongst themselves in the warmth of those closeted bothies, has long since become extinct.’

  CHAPTER 6

  Douglas Murray – Whisky Technologist

  WHEN WE THINK OF WHISKY-MAKING there is a tendency to romanticise the whole business of turning barley in a field into spirit in a bottle, but a business is exactly what it is, and one that has increasingly come to rely on technological and scientific advances to ensure its prosperity. This is particularly true of large-scale production, such as that undertaken by Diageo, which owns the world’s bestselling blended Scotch in the shape of Johnnie Walker.

  Johnnie Walker is globally the leading Scotch whisky in terms of both value and volume, selling almost 18 million cases per year, and Diageo’s Scotch whisky brands saw net sales total close to £3 billion during the financial year 2011/12. With growth running at around the 50% mark during the past five years, the company has invested massively in many of its existing 27 malt distilleries and its Cameronbridge grain distillery, as
well as spending £40 million on an entirely new, vast malt distillery at Roseisle on Speyside during 2008/09, bringing their malt distillery portfolio to 28.

  In 2012 Diageo announced its intention to spend £1 billion upgrading more of its distilleries, augmenting warehousing and building at least one new distillery of approximately the same capacity as Roseisle (10 million litres per annum), while preparing plans for another.

  This is whisky-making on its most industrial scale and with increased efficiency, productivity and consistency, coupled with environmental sensitivity being the ultimate goals of public companies like Diageo, it may be argued that the unsung heroes of the modern Scotch whisky industry are actually scientists and technical gurus. One of the most respected such figures is Douglas Murray, Process and Liquid Technology Manager for Diageo Scotland Ltd. Douglas was born among the ‘powerhouse’ grain distilleries that were at the heart of the whisky industry in Central Scotland, where the likes of the now lost Cambus and Carsebridge plants were situated in Clackmannanshire, and Douglas recalls that, ‘I joined the DCL on 1st October 1972, as a laboratory assistant at Cambus distillery. I actually joined the Scottish Grain Distillers [SGD] subsidiary. I was eighteen years old at the time.’

  Cambus dated from 1806 and was one of the earliest grain distilleries in Scotland, converting from malt to grain production 30 years after its establishment. Cambus has a place in DCL history as of the six grain distilleries involved in the formation of the company in 1877. However, this did not prevent its closure during 1993, a decade after nearby Carsebridge had fallen victim to company cutbacks, and five years after DCL’s great Caledonian grain distillery in Edinburgh also closed.

  ‘DCL was well respected,’ says Douglas. ‘My father was very pleased when I got a job with them. My mother’s family had a long distilling history, with lots of her cousins working in the Scotch whisky industry. Her great-great-grandfather worked in Port Charlotte Distillery on Islay. The family was from Islay, and came over to the mainland to work at Port Dundas Distillery in Glasgow when that opened in the early 19th century, eventually moving to Glenochil Distillery at Menstrie. Glenochil belonged to DCL and though it closed in 1929, most of the site has been retained and it’s actually where I am now based. So it was through distilling that my family came to be in the Clackmannanshire area, and several of my cousins worked at Cambus.’

  As is so often the case, Douglas got his first job at Cambus Distillery due to a connection with someone already working there, though in this instance it was actually the distillery manager. ‘When I was in my teens I was a good athlete,’ he says, ‘and one of the coaches at the local athletics club was the Cambus manager, Donald Beaton. He heard I was looking for a job and he took me on.

  ‘I turned up at Cambus for my first day’s work on the 1st October 1972, but it was a local holiday. Nobody had told me. I was sent home by the gate man! I went back on the Tuesday only to find my boss, Mr Thorburn, didn’t know anything about me starting work. The manager hadn’t told him, and he didn’t even know that anyone else was needed in the lab, where I was to be based.’

  Formality was the name of the game within DCL, as it still was within most organisations at the time, and Douglas notes that, ‘They were always addressed as Mr Beaton and Mr Thorburn, and everyone wore a tie to work, even in the lab. I had to go to a stationery shop and buy a fountain pen, because Customs and Excise insisted every ledger entry was in fountain pen.

  ‘You would get visits from the top people in the company, and when Dr Forbes, who ran SGD, came around it was a big day. He would come round the site and say hello to everyone and then disappear into the manager’s office for the remainder of his visit.’

  Dr Magnus Pike, who found television fame during the 1970s as an eccentric, arm-waving populist of science, was head of the research department when Douglas was working at Cambus. ‘Once a week he came over from Glenochil and nosed the spirit,’ notes Douglas, who insists that, ‘Overall, DCL was a caring company. It had a staff association as well as a union. If you were “staff” you had a separate toilet to the workers, and you got a key for it! There was a strict work ethic, as in almost all companies at that time. You started work at nine am and finished at five pm. There was no such thing as flexitime. They were good employers, though, and people would spend their entire lives with DCL.

  ‘After twenty-five years of service you got a prize – you picked something appropriate from a catalogue,’ notes Douglas, ‘and if you worked for forty or fifty years you got a sum of money for a present, and a presentation was then made in the canteen. DCL was a family, and it was obvious who your father was! You got parental advice rather than friendly conversation. By contrast, today’s Diageo is a happy-go-lucky family.’

  DCL was absorbed firstly through its controversial takeover by Guinness plc in 1986, after which United Distillers was created as the spirits arm of Guiness. Then, as a result of the merger in 1997 between Guinness and Grand Metropolitan plc, Diageo was created.

  Back in the days of DCL, the powerful combine incorporated the six most significant Scotch whisky brands of its day, all previously independent companies, and Douglas notes that, ‘Each of the ‘big six’ Scotch whisky companies within DCL very much retained its own identity, and quite a lot of autonomy. The company was like a series of silos. You had Buchanan’s (Black and White) at Stepps in Glasgow, White Horse at Port Dundas in Glasgow, Sanderson’s (Vat 69) at South Queensferry, near Edinburgh, Haig at Markinch in Fife, Dewar’s in Perth and Johnnie Walker in Kilmarnock. All the cask ends associated with each of the six were painted different colours and stencilled with their names.’

  Despite the fact that Cambus was not remotely located like many rural, malt distilleries, ‘When I started work there the distillery was a real community,’ recalls Douglas, ‘because almost everything was done in-house. You had your own carpenter, plumber, engineer, painters, even the people who cleaned our overalls. They were all DCL employees. Nothing was outsourced. Most of the houses in Cambus were owned by DCL, and the company also had lots of farms. Some were arable, but the majority had cattle on them, in order to eat the ‘draff’ produced during distillation.’

  Recalling Donald Beaton, the Cambus manager’s abiding love of sports, Douglas remembers that, ‘He was into the shot put and they used to practice in front of the distillery. But one day the distillery blacksmith came past and Donald asked him if he’d ever thrown a hammer. He said no, he hadn’t, but he’d give it a go. Well, he threw it eighteen feet past Donald’s best mark. The lads like me, we never beat Donald – it just wasn’t done. We knew better. Not only did the blacksmith beat Donald but when the hammer landed it broke the water main and the entire distillery had to be shut down. After that, Donald and the blacksmith had anvil-lifting competitions instead!’

  In common with all large distilleries, there was a significant HM Customs & Excise presence on the Cambus site, and Douglas recalls that, ‘There was a surveyor and four officers, plus eight or more “watchers” or “gaugers”. There was an almost military hierarchy within the Customs and Excise. As a distiller, you couldn’t do anything without a day’s notification. They effectively dictated what you did – if you wanted to do an extra mash or whatever, it required their permission.’

  There were also some notably quirky aspects of the DCL operation, and Douglas explains that, ‘We had fishing rights on the rivers Devon and Forth, and we had two fishing boats at Cambus Distillery. We had four or five miles on the north bank of the Forth, and two fishing beats at the distillery. Workers were sometimes sent out to fish for salmon or sea trout from the bank, and whatever was caught was taken to the CO2 plant and frozen there. The fish came out like cricket bats!

  ‘They would be sent up to big hotels where DCL board members were hosting events. Usually the board members ate the salmon, and the sea trout were often cut up and distributed among the Cambus workforce as a perk. ‘Members of the DCL board would go fishing from time to time and a Telex would arrive
at the distillery office informing us when this was about to happen. We would stop mashing or whatever and go out into the fields and dig up worms and grubs to be used as bait. We had our own gardeners and they would prepare biscuit tins filled with straw. The worms were duly put into the tins, which were labelled by field and by distillery – it wasn’t only Cambus that undertook this duty.

  ‘One of the directors’ chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royces would arrive at the distillery to collect the Cambus worms. I remember after one fishing trip to Oykell Bridge up in Sutherland we received a hand-written letter outlining which worms had performed best and instructing the gardeners and local farmers not to interfere with the fields where the best worms were produced!’ If all of this sounds decidedly Victorian and patriarchal to anyone used to modern corporate life, it should be remembered that these events were actually occurring during the 1970s and early 1980s!

  In terms of Douglas’s own career he says that, ‘DCL liked you to get a chemistry qualification, and I got my HNC in chemistry at technical college. Then, in 1975, a chemist’s job came up at Cambus and I got the position. I did an Open University degree in chemistry and my title changed to Quality Manager, after which I moved into environmental management during the mid to late-1980s. In 1992 I transferred to the malt distilling side of the business, initially with a role in scrutinising spirit character.