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CHARLES MACLEAN Have you ever dreamed of owning a malt whisky distillery in Scotland? I can assure you there are many who do: I have been asked to advise half a dozen interested parties over the past two years. Trouble is, distilleries don’t often come up for sale, and when they do, their owners are often reluctant to allow the purchaser to continue to distil whisky, since they have probably been closed because there is surplus production. And this is just the first hurdle to jump…
One such dreamer is the London-based wine merchant, Mark Reynier, but unlike most, he has realised his dream. Here’s how it came about. Together with his partner, Simon Coughlin, Mark began to bottle odd casks of single malt whisky in the early 1990s, under the label ‘Murray McDavid’ – his maternal grandparents’ surnames. In 1996 they were joined by Gordon Wright, former marketing director for Springbank Distillery, Campbeltown, from whom they had been buying occasional casks since 1991. The dream of owning a distillery began to shape itself in their minds about then. They made a pitch for Islay’s Ardbeg Distillery in 1997 and were runners up to Glenmorangie; soon after this they heard that Bruichladdich Distillery, also on the fabled whisky isle, might be available. Its owners, Jim Beam Brands, had mothballed it in 1994 but seemed uncertain what to do with it. I remember telephoning JBB’s Finance Director in about 1998 on behalf of another interested party and he was very oblique: “We might be prepared to sell to the right people, but the distillery is not officially for sale”, etc. Mark will have received the same perplexing reply, but he persisted for four years and was rewarded at last, in January 2000, when JBB said they would sell for £6.5 million (which included several thousand casks of mature whisky at various ages) on condition he obtained the backing of a major bank. “The Bank of Scotland said they would support the venture to the tune of £3 million, provided I raised the balance from private investors. I don’t think they believed I could do it but I discussed it with friends and customers. The support for such a home-spun venture was heartening, especially since we were not an industrial giant, with huge financial credibility. At last I had forty-eight investors, all private: one third of the equity came from Islay and over half from Scotland. I went back to the Bank, who evidently were shocked that I had succeeded and that they now had to take me seriously! JBB’s closing date was 12pm on Friday 12th December; by 10am we were still £300,000 short, but were assured that the money had been ‘sent’ but had been lost in cyberspace—and from another branch of the Bank of Scotland! At 11.59am with one minute to spare, the funds were in place. Phew! For reasons I never understand it took a further week to shift the funds to JBB and we took possession, 30 minutes after the birth of my first child— and ten years of trying! One hell of a day!” Although the distillery was technically operational, a lot of repair and restoration work had to be done. Reynier and his partner were incredibly fortunate in managing to tempt Jim McEwan, former Distillery Manager at Bowmore and a legendary brand ambassador for malt whisky and Scotland, to sacrifice his pension and join them as Director of Production. If anybody knows about distilling, Jim does. He began working in distilleries thirty-eight years ago as an apprentice cooper and his passion for whisky is matched only by his love for his homeland, Islay. “In a small way, I believe Bruichladdich can be a catalyst for rebuilding the island community. Not all the youngsters who go to Glasgow or London for degrees want to stay away. We need to bring them back, but there has to be something to come back to.”
Using a team of mainly local men, Jim set about putting the distillery to rights in January this year. The first spirit flowed from the stills at 8.26 am on 29th May. It was a nail-biting moment; when anything is replaced at a distillery, people get nervous that the spirit character might change. In this case, Jim had to wait for far longer than he expected for the foreshots – the first running of the still – to clear so he could start saving spirit. “We couldn’t look at each other,” he says, “for fear of breaking down into tears”. On September 6th Jim and his team launched their new range of Bruichladdich single malts, at 10, 15 and 20 years old, all at 46%Vol and bottled without colouring or chill-filtration. I was there, and can assure you that they are outstandingly good. I have never been a fan of Bruichladdich, but these whiskies are something else. It just shows what you can do when you have someone who really knows what they are doing to select your casks. Just another thing for those who dream about owning a malt whisky distillery to bear in mind…
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