🥃 J & G Stewart
- Jun 21
- 3 min read
Always look up.
Well, look down first, just to make sure you don’t tread in anything untoward. But there’s a wealth of Scotch whisky history surrounding us - if only we remember to look up to view it.
Take this building on Edinburgh’s High Street. Anyone living in or visiting the city has probably walked by it countless times.
At first glance, it just looks like one of the many tourist traps located on the Royal Mile. But on the lintel, just above a window on the second-floor, you’ll see the letters JS and GS together with the date of 1902.
The initials belong to one of Edinburgh’s oldest Scotch whisky firms: J&G Stewart.
The date of 1902, by the way, doesn’t mark the founding of the firm. Instead, it reflects when the area was redeveloped, which resulted in a number of Old Town slums being cleared. 1902 marks the involvement of the then developers and petitioners, J & G Stewart Ltd - the limited company formed in 1899.
Despite the date on the stone, the company’s roots stretch back much further. To 1779, in fact.
James Stewart started the business as a wine and tea merchant. But it was thanks to his sons, John and George, who developed the business into the spirit merchants it became.
Now, I don’t have a picture of the Stewarts as such. But for reasons explained later in this email, here’s the label from a bottle of Whyte & Mackay’s Stewart’s Finest Blended Scotch Whisky. I reckon that’s James in the middle. But as to which of the other two is John and which is George, your guess is as good as mine.
These premises on the High Street once housed their general offices, and when our favourite whisky writer Alfred Barnard visited in the 1880s, he described the premises as “very handsomely decorated.” He also noted something remarkable for the time: all of the J & G Stewart buildings were connected by telephone.
The other J & G Stewart building - their enormous duty-paid stores - stood at the foot of St Mary’s Street. Sadly, I think it’s just the site of an overpriced Travelodge now.
From Barnard’s account, we know that the St Mary’s Street building was particularly impressive. At six stories high, it stretched 330 feet end to end. Each floor housed a different department, and the whisky stored there - whether in hogsheads, butts, or cases - was destined for the UK market.
Inside there were sixty vats, each holding over 550 gallons of matured blended whisky, largely sourced from Highland distilleries.
The site also included a bottling department and a cooperage, and the entire building was heated by steam pipes connected to a furnace in the basement. Surprisingly, it wasn’t this rather obvious fire hazard that eventually brought the company to a halt in 1898.
If you’ve already read my book, you’ll know what brought the then owner of J & G Stewart - the fabulously named Ebenezer Hughes - to stop payment. Ebenezer had been running the company on his own since 1886. But after a syndicate took over in 1898, Ebenezer continued as manager until late 1900.
And it was at this time that J & G Stewart Ltd moved to new headquarters in Leith. Paying subscribers can find out more about the firm’s operations there in the follow-up email tomorrow.
J & G Stewart gained a global reputation as pioneers in the export trade, sending their whiskies around the world. Barnard wrote that their blends came from “the best malt distilleries”, which is good because nobody wants whisky from the shittest malt distilleries. He also noted that they maintained an “immense stock maturing in sherry wood.” That immense stock became a major part of the company’s acquisition by DCL in 1917, which included 8,000 butts of maturing whisky, making it one of the largest transactions in Scotch whisky history at the time. Two years later, DCL acquired Andrew Usher & Co, under the J & G Stewart name.
The firm held the licence to operate the now lost (or is it?) Coleburn Distillery in Speyside after DCL took over complete control of J & G Stewart in 1930.
And with the news that Coleburn is going to be brought back to life after forty years of laying dormant, it’ll be interesting to see how much - if any - of this heritage is tapped into.
Later, in 1986, another significant (and controversial) moment came when Guinness took over DCL. J & G Stewart, as part of DCL, became part of the newly formed United Distillers. Competition laws, however, required some brands to be redistributed, which is why today the labelling rights for some of the brands - including the above mentioned Stewart’s Finest - lie with Whyte & Mackay.
Slàinte! Justine