How Scottish distilleries tried their hands at other things

[Quaich1]

I came across a wonderful article called "Distillery Diversification Lesson from History?" in a whisky magazine submitted by Ian Buxton, a well-known and respected whisky insider. Let me summarize and give you the highlights of Ian's wonderful piece. He tells of how in the 1970's and part of the 80's a perfect storm of economic and geopolitical problems forced many Scottish distilleries to close shop. The remaining ones dug in deep to weather the storm. With whisky sales slumping heavily, a number of notable distilleries though continuing to produce whisky veered into new frontiers to attempt to make money to cover their costs, etc. I was not aware at all of this phenomenon and find it more than fascinating. Here's what they did.

Glenfarclas decided to try to enter the world of raising crayfish between 1975 and 1977, those creepy crawlers that are the sensation down in Louisiana. Glenfarclas got their stock from Sweden and moved an old mash tun to the stillhouse and started the enterprise. Commercially, it was a disaster and the best laid plans of mice and men turned against them.

Tomatin also ventured into new terrain. They started raising eels in the early 1980's in an attempt to use waste heat. They spent more than $150,000 on the venture at the time the distillery was in survival mode. Eventually, Tomatin went into liquidation in 1985 and the eel experiment went with it.

Now there's Glen Garioch. In the mid-1970's, the distillery went full-blown into waste heat recovery both for the malt kiln and wash but also to heat an acre of greenhouses where they raised tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, cucumbers, tulips and geraniums. Thirty tons of tomatoes for example were produced annually. As leadership changed at the distillery, a more traditionalist distiller came in and was less motivated to be a whisky-farmer hybrid.

Another light bulb idea for distilleries to make extra money came from Glen Moray and their venture was fish, tilapia, to be exact. In 1989 this was set up at Glen Moray's idle Saladin Box maltings. It was estimated that potentially they could produce a ton of fish per week. Marketing and shipping became a problem and after 2 years this project was shut down.

Tamdhu tried their hand at breeding trout. Highland Distillers tried commercially growing mushrooms.

Even though these ventures in the end proved not exactly what some of these project leaders envisioned, some had more success than others. Ingenuity is the mother of invention they say and I am both surprised and impressed with the thinking process and innovation of these distilleries during the hard times to make a go of other enterprises while still making whisky and using their whisky equipment and byproducts, heat, etc. to facilitate the realization of other commercial enterprises at the same time.

Maybe there is money to be made in crayfish, eels, tilapia and vegetables in Scottish whisky country afterall.


_________________
"Always carry a large flagon of whisky in case of snakebite and furthermore always carry a small snake."
W.C. Fields (1880-1946)

[Whisky Dog]

An interesting piece. I wonder if I ever had Glen Garioch tomatoes or Highland Distillers mushroom.

Most of the big whisky companies also own other wines and spirits these days in case trends change and whisky has been around long enough to know trends will change.

[Andy M]

Yes interesting, I wasn't aware of some these money making schemes

[Darwin]

I think the garden was a good idea, maybe the only good one of the lot.