Failure, Frozen, Thievery and Arson

Many success stories begin with failure. The story of Dalwhinnie is no different. It begins in 1897 with three business partners by the names of Grant, Sellar and Mackenzie.

The men started with nothing. Nothing. Apart from a small £10,000 investment (£1.6 million today) for the construction of a state-of-the-art distillery. So, from nothing. They chose the village of Dalwhinnie and founded the Strathspey distillery.

When choosing a location for a distillery two things are essential: a fruitful source of barley and pure spring water. However, in a bout of what we now call ‘out of the box thinking’, the founders went down a different path. Instead, they started in one of the most inaccessible areas of the highlands. In the coldest village in the UK. With no rights to the water from a local estate and no farmland.

In spite of the isolated location. In spite of the lack of resources. And in spite of the difficulties constructing the still. In just one year…they completely failed. With all the money spent, they filed for complete bankruptcy. Then enters Mr A. P. Blyth.

A savvy investor at the time. Blyth took on the still, with a rebrand and a new lick of paint. He renamed it Dalwhinnie. Meaning meeting place, an ode to the shepherds who would drive cows through the mountains and meet along the road in the area. The relaunch was a success and Blyth ran the distillery for years. Seven years to be exact.

Until the business was run into the ground. Once again bankrupt. In 1905 Cook and Bernheimer, who were American, swooped in. They bought the distillery for £1,250 and - those of a nervous disposition need not read further - immediately begin blending the Scotch with bourbon to ‘suit the American market’. Now I don’t believe in karma. But…

Coincidentally right after this prohibition hit America. This forced a sale. The distillery was put back into sturdy Scottish hands. At this point in the history, as with many memories and tales that involve a whisky, the next chapter in the distillery’s history becomes rather fuzzy.

The ‘facts’ tell us the distillery burned down on the 1^{st of} February 1934. The locals have a slightly different story.

It has been reckoned there was some tension.  This was between the underpaid workers and the Distillery Company LTD. Then one evening. In a pub. Things got out of hand.

The question “would it be wrong to right an injustice?” was asked. May a daring campaign have been launched. A Scottish rescue, of sorts. As the saying goes ‘in an emergency never leave a dram behind’. Barrels heroically saved from a warehouse, that just hours later would catch fire.

Masked vigilantes, known only to themselves, and perhaps their wives. Who the next morning asked, “have we always had that barrel in the attic?”. The heroic rescue operation kept the doors of the distillery closed (and maybe the glasses of those workers full) for four years.

The distillery reopened in 1938 to be closed again in 1940 due to the war. Post war the distillery continued. It became one of Scotland’s six classic malts in 1989 almost a hundred years after its inception.

Perhaps this is why Dalwhinnie is so popular today, an unrelenting appetite for failure. Or alternatively bloody Scottish stubbornness and the refusal to give up.