Whisky Historical Archive

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The Edinburgh Malt Whisky Tour is fortunate to have been able to obtain access to a major new historical work on distilleries. Douglas Stone of Wisconsin, USA has been researching distilleries with particular reference to their histories and changing ownership for the past two years.

The full work is still in preparation but Doug has consented meantime for the index portion to be made available over the Internet. This catalogues the major commercial events in the histories of over 1000 current and defunct distilleries. I look forward to seeing the final version which, with narratives and pictures promises to be one of the most definitive reference histories of Scottish distilling to be published for many years.

John Butler, August 1996

This database is part of a larger text involving the whisky companies, independent businesses, importer/exporters of whisky, beginning in 1823. Distilleries and businesses existed long before this date, but the official documentation is difficult to verify. The idea behind this project was to create time lines for each distillery, company and parent corporation, giving each its own time and space within the history of the whisky industry. The current research has taken two years to reach this point.

For this current edition of the database, my main source of information was Michael Moss & John Hume's classic book, The Making of Scotch Whisky (1981) and Philip Morrice's book, The Schweppes Guide to Scotch. Very little of the information included is due to my original research. Instead, the purpose is to pull together various texts and place their information within a chronological and alphabetical database so that the subject would be placed within its own time frame. Currently, I am working with aptly named book by H. Charles Craig, The Scotch Whisky Industry Record.

The database will be updated every 4-6 weeks as new material is reviewed. In time, I hope to publish both the distillery histories along with the company index, which will have to remain off-line for copyright reasons.

Any book references, magazine/newspaper articles that you would like to see included in the database will be gratefully accepted. Credit for the person(s) providing the material will be put into the database along with the information.

Feel free to leave your comments and suggestions. I will be happy to correspond with interested parties whenver possible and you may meet the real Dr. Dog if you like.

Dr. Do'g <5ui4stonel@vmsa.csd.mu.edu>