🥃 From Malt To Grain: Bo'ness Distillery
- 13 hours ago
- 4 min read
The town of Borrowstounness was once home to (at least) two distilleries but, sadly, its whisky making days are very much in the past.
The name itself is a bit of a mouthful. But ever since the eighteenth century (I’m not sure exactly when), the town has really been known by its moniker – Bo’ness.
One of the two distilleries was relatively short-lived, operating from 1817 until 1842. But the other fared for much longer; just over a hundred years, in fact.
Established in 1813, Bo’ness Distillery was unusual in that it produced both malt and grain spirit. Not at the same time, I should add. Market forces in the 1870s encouraged that transition. But more on that later.
The original founders - Tod, Padon and Vannan (which sounds like the name of a dodgy folk band, to be honest) – set the distillery up to produce malt spirit. It wasn’t until 1873 that the distillery changed tack and started to produce grain spirit.
Now, one of the things that interests me most about the history of Scotch whisky is the people who built the industry into what it is today. It therefore always surprises me when reference books provide very little information – often nothing more than an incomplete name – about some of the individuals behind these enterprises. At the very least, we owe these people the courtesy of referring to them by their full names.
So, let’s go back to our dodgy folk trio...
John Padon was in a business partnership with both an Andrew and a James Tod which was subsequently dissolved in 1809. What the business involved is something I have yet to find out. However, it does suggest that the Tod who featured in our trio was very likely to have been either Andrew or James.
Andrew Vannan, born in 1778, was the other founder. By 1861, he’s recorded in the census report as being a retired distiller.
His son - also called Andrew - died in 1901 and in the probate index, he’s recorded as being a former distiller.
So, it’s fair to deduce that Andrew Jnr took over the reins of the distillery, following in his father’s footsteps.
We know a fair bit about the distillery itself thanks to our good pal Alfred Barnard. By the time of his visit, though, in the 1880s, the distillery had changed hands. The new owner was James Calder & Co.
James Calder’s role in both the brewing and distilling industries in Scotland is an article in its own right. In fact, it would take a few weeks of emails to merely scratch the surface. So, we’ll come back to him in the not too distant future.
But it was when James Calder & Co acquired Bo’ness Distillery in 1873 that its transformation from malt to grain started.
At this point, there are a couple of questions here that we should stop to ask – and, hopefully, answer. Firstly, why did the owners of Bo’ness Distillery sell up? Well, our folk trio had disbanded in 1829 and it was only the Vannan family who were keeping it going after that.
The Vannans put the distillery on the market in 1873 – just as the boom period for the Scotch whisky trade was about to start. At this time, remember, blenders needed to secure supplies of spirit for their products. With the grain distilleries in the hands of a mere few, the fear that these distillers would hold the monopoly on the price of grain spirit was always very much present. It’s why North British Distillery in Edinburgh, as well as Ardgowan in the west, were subsequently built.
From this advert, it looks as though the Vannans were thinking along these lines too with the suggestion that Bo’ness could easily be converted into a grain distillery. And that’s exactly what James Calder & Co did.
And so, with the second question hopefully answered, this is why the distillery was expanded and the pot stills removed to be replaced by a Coffey still.
As distilleries go it was a fair size, capable of an annual output of 870,000 gallons (just under 4 million litres - about ten times less than e.g Strathclyde or Invergordon today).
The grain used at the time at Bo’ness was maize and the casks, once filled with spirit, were housed in the bonded warehouses across the road from the distillery. The bonds themselves could hold 5,000 casks.
Bo’ness Distillery changed hands once again after the death of James Calder in 1917. By the turn of the next decade, the distillery was in the hands of The Evil Empire. Paying subscribers can find out more about in tomorrow’s follow-up email.
Today, nothing remains of Bo’ness Distillery*. The pagoda towers were demolished in 1968 but the bonded warehouses remained in use right up until 1987.
There were ambitious plans to turn these warehouses into workshops with the hope of generating employment for the town. Sadly, it didn’t come to fruition. And then a fire in the early 1990s subsequently put paid to any future plans for the buildings.
Huge thanks to Whisky Through Time subscriber Graham for suggesting Bo’ness Distillery for this week’s topic!
Slà inte! Justine
*There’s some suggestion that a round brick structure just off the main road is the only vestige; other sources suggest that this structure didn’t exist prior to the 1980s.