The GlenDronach bottle label has always prominently featured the signature of James Allardice, the man who inherited Boynsmill Estate in 1800 and would later open GlenDronach Distillery at Boynsmill in 1826. But GlenDronach’s genesis was hardly a one man show.

Prior to the passage of the Excise Act in 1823, the Scottish Highlands and the Hebrides Isles were riddled with dozens to hundreds of moonshiner operations and illegal distilling concerns. After years of ineffective suppression efforts, His Majesty’s Government gave up and elected to legalize the booming underground Scottish distilling industry and tax the revenue.

This might surprise you, but turns out soon after the Excise Act was passed, there quickly emerged several groups of businessmen and farmer-landowners who were, uh, *well-positioned* with distilling equipment, suitable facilities, barley supply, farmland, and/or already aging stocks of whisky.

James Allardice was the leading face of one such group of strategically positioned men. Allardice was semi-derisively nicknamed “Laird Cobbie” and “Laird of Cobairdy” by neighbors given his habit of *living más* and enjoying life’s finer things. But no one could deny he was a charismatic dude who just so happened to have excellent facilities for a distillery as well as a great water supply in the form of the Burn of Dronac.

Allardice was joined by a pair of local barley farmers, Robert Stuart and John Thain, who supplied the barley to Allardice’s distillery. The final piece of the cabal came in the form of Allardice’s cousin William Davidson, who was conveniently a professional chemist already involved in the production and sale of Brewer’s Yeast. In 1826, GlenDronach opened at Boynsmill Estate, and the rest is history.

So while Laird Cobbie gets the shine on the bottle label, it in fact took a proverbial village of (maybe) ex-moonshiners to launch the distillery. As one does.

Image courtesy of Jon who also writes on Low Class & High Proof.

Low Class & High Proof

I learned how to make cocktails watching Danger 5