Clydesdale Distillery — Lowland Single Malt Whisky

Clydesdale Distillery is a former Scotch whisky distillery that stood near Wishaw, in the Lowland region of Scotland. It was founded around 1825 and was closed in 1919, with its buildings eventually demolished in 1988. Clydesdale was one of five Lowland distilleries whose 1914 merger created Scottish Malt Distillers Limited, the forerunner of today's Diageo.

History

Clydesdale Distillery was established around 1825 by Lord Belhaven and Stenton at a reported cost of £90,000, drawing its process water from the Cambusnethan peat moss near Wishaw in Lanarkshire. Rather than being run directly by its founder, the distillery was leased out to operators, first to Patrick Chalmers and later to J. M. Mackenzie and Co. It was substantial enough by the 1880s to be included in Alfred Barnard's landmark survey "The Whisky Distilleries of the United Kingdom" (1887), one of only a handful of Lowland producers he documented. In 1894 the business was reorganised as the Clydesdale Distillery Company Limited, a new company floated with £67,000 of capital to acquire the distillery and J. M. Mackenzie and Co.'s trade. Two decades later, in 1914, Clydesdale was merged with four other Lowland distilleries — Glenkinchie, Rosebank, A. and J. Dawson, and William Young and Co — to form Scottish Malt Distillers Limited, a consolidation vehicle for the Distillers Company Limited (DCL), the industrial group that would eventually become part of Diageo.

Quick Facts

• Region: Lowland
• Founded: c. 1825
• Owner: Historically the Distillers Company Limited (DCL), via Scottish Malt Distillers Ltd; the site no longer operates
• Status: Closed

Closure & Legacy

Production at Clydesdale ceased in 1919, when the Distillers Company Limited took over the site with the intention of converting the former distilling buildings into bonded warehousing rather than continuing to make whisky there. The buildings stood, largely repurposed for storage, for almost seventy more years before finally being demolished in 1988, erasing the last physical trace of the distillery. No brand of single malt is actively associated with Clydesdale today, and, as with many long-closed Lowland distilleries of this era, surviving original bottlings are essentially unknown on the market; any authenticated whisky distilled at Clydesdale would be a rare curiosity for collectors of historic Lowland malts rather than a recognised commercial expression.