The Glenlivet is a whisky distillery in the Speyside district of Highland Scotland—the first in that region to take out a distilling license, in 1824. The founder was George Smith (1792–1871), a tenant of the Duke of Gordon. The duke was largely responsible for promoting the Excise Act of 1823, which encouraged illicit distillers to “go legal.” Smith had been making whisky illegally since at least 1815, and when—urged by his landlord—he applied for a license, his former colleagues threatened to, in his words, “burn the distillery to the ground, and me at the heart of it. The laird of Aberlour presented me with a pair of hair-trigger pistols worth ten guineas, and they were never out of my belt for ten years.” Today these pistols are displayed in the distillery’s visitor center.
The illicit spirit from Glenlivet already had a high reputation: when King George IV visited Edinburgh in 1822, he reportedly “drank nothing else.” Andrew Usher & Co, of Edinburgh, were offering it for sale in 1821 and were sole agents for the make by 1844 and were offering “the Real Glenlivet Whisky” for sale in London (the first scotch to be promoted there). In 1853 they used it in the first ever branded scotch whisky, Usher’s Old Vatted Glenlivet.
In 1840, George Smith was able to lease another farm nearby and open a second, small, distillery. In 1859 he moved his operations to the present site at Minmore, half a mile from his original distillery. He was succeeded by his son, John Gordon Smith, in 1871. By the 1880s the name Glenlivet had become synonymous with quality: thirty distilleries, some of them miles from the glen itself, attached it to their own. This gave rise to Glenlivet being described as “the longest glen in Scotland.” In 1884, J. G. Smith obtained a court order that only his whisky could be described as “The Glenlivet.”
As soon as Prohibition was lifted in America, George Smith’s great-grandson went there to promote his whisky, the first single malt ever seen in the United States. It caused such a stir that he made it onto the front page of Time magazine, with the line: “The heart of Great Britain’s export trade is the Scotch whisky industry. The heart of the Scotch industry is The Glenlivet.” Now owned by Chivas Brothers, the scotch whisky division of Pernod-Ricard, the Glenlivet is the second-bestselling single malt in the world. See Pernod-Ricard. Capacity was increased by 75 percent at the distillery in 2010 (to 10.5 million liters of pure alcohol), and there are plans for further substantial expansion in the near future. The Glenlivet’s signature expression, a twelve-year-old malt made without influence of peat or sherry, is a subtle, even delicate whisky that is considered one of the benchmarks of the category.
See also single malt.
Francis, Edward. The Glenlivet: Spirit of the Place. Whitley, UK: Good Books, 1997.
Glenlivet: Where Romance and Business Meet. Ballindalloch, UK: Glenlivet Distillery, 1959.
Grant, Elizabeth. Memoirs of a Highland Lady. Edinburgh: Cannongate, 1898.
MacLean, Charles. Scotch Whisky: A Liquid History. London: Cassell, 1997.
Wilson, Ross. Scotch: Its History and Romance. Newton Abbot, UK: David & Charles, 1973.
By: Charles MacLean