ILLICIT DISTILLING IN THE 18th CENTURY

The terms of the negotiations for the Treaty of Union in 1707 had arranged that when the tax was re-imposed throughout Britain, after the conclusion of the war, it would not be imposed on equal terms in Scotland and England, but would take the respective national economic conditions into consideration. After the cessation of hostilities in 1713, the question was brought before the United Kingdom parliament and the proposal was made, despite the 1707 agreement, that the duty be equal on both sides of the Border.

Despite complaints by the Scots and their supporters, the legislation was forced and met with almost total opposition in Scotland, where attempts to enforce payment of duty were generally futile from the very first. From the period after 1725, there is an increasing amount of evidence for action against individuals brewing and malting without notice as the authorities attempted to enforce the Malt Tax. In early 1742 eleven individuals in Tain were cited for illicit distilling, having attempted to conceal their stills in garrets, bed-chambers and closets. Later in the same year a further thirty-one dwellers in the burgh were convicted on the same charge, stills having been found in cellars, lofts, byres and bed-chambers. Despite this action individuals continued to brew and distil illicitly in an effort to avoid the tax, and it was not simply poor burgesses and country-folk who were involved in the law-breaking. In 1744 a complaint was made to the baillie baron of Tain by Alexander Simson, tacksman of Wester Ardgay, against Alexander Munro, kirk officer of Kincardine. His action commented that -'notwithstanding that orders were issued to suppress them from brewing and selling ale and aquavitie...still persist...those little by-Brewers are so much haunted (have so many customers) that complainers make little of it'.

Two years later some fifty individuals, including residents in the toun of Tarlogie, were indicted for brewing and distilling in secret places and in 1749 yet more burgesses of Tain were indicted on the same charge, stills being found under beds, in latrine-closets, under piles of peats and under heaps of clothing.

The illicit brewers and distillers could expect such demand from customers as to make the risk of discovery and fines worthwhile. At the end of the 18th Century James Grant, writing to Sir Charles Ross of Balnagown, commented that so long as the landed gentry, who were also the local justices, continued to get their whisky on easy terms from illicit suppliers there could be no hope of clamping down on the illegal trade. In November 1817 the Commissioners of Excise felt that it was necessary to publish broadsheets for public distribution warning of the severe penalties imposed on anyone convicted of any involvement, no matter how slight, in illicit distillation. Fines ranging from £20 to £200 transmutable into sentences of imprisonment, if the convicted man were unable to pay, represented a considerable deterrent in an age when the average man's weekly wage was counted only in shillings. It was only with the more rigorous application of the requirement for distilling licences and more adequate policing of the Highlands in the middle of the 19th century that the illicit trade began to die out.

Malt tax rates were increased in 1779, 1780 and again in the spring of 1802 as the government of the day sought to raise the revenues available to it to finance the wars against Napoleon and his allies. However, major commercial distillers had seen a loophole in the act and were importing higher quality English barley to Scotland, malting it but only paying the reduced Scottish rate of duty.

At the same time as agitation was growing over the levying of the Malt Tax, we learn a little about the state of distilling in the north (and especially in Ross-shire) from the correspondence between James Grant and Sir Charles Ross. At the time of Grant's writing to Ross in 1798 there were sharp divisions between the Highland and Lowland producers in terms of work practice, technology and level of output. In the Lowlands, for example, it seems to have been common to work on Sundays whilst, in the still fiercely Sabbatarian Highlands all production ceased on the Saturday. In the Lowlands, moreover, it was recorded that stills could be discharged some ninety times in twenty-four hours, whereas the Highlanders could scarcely manage to discharge theirs six times. Even allowing for some exaggeration on Grant's part, there was a clear imbalance in favour of the south, and it was felt that any duty levied should be fixed in a proportion that reflected this imbalance. In the Highlander's favour, however, was the fact that his whisky was without doubt superior to any of the mass-production of the Lowland distillers.

A letter from 1754, preserved in the museum at Tain, records the despatch of 'an STILL POT...Cock and worme' by John Grant, coppersmith in Inverness, by boat to Alexander Ross of Pitcalnie. At over 109lbs weight of copper this was not a small item and it is likely that Mr Ross's new still was intended for more than just domestic production. James Grant's letter of 1798 refers to a Ross-shire whisky called 'Ferintosh' under which name some Lowland distillers were trying to sell their own inferior brand. Publication of lists of licensed distillers establishes that by 1822 there were three distilleries in Ross: at Milton, Pollo and Teananich, the last of which was producing nearly 9000 gallons of liquor each year. The small Tain distillery was established by David Sutherland in the early 1820s on a site at the west end of the town. The Inverness Journal for 23rd June 1826 advertised his property for sale, describing it as 'small but commodious' and containing a 59 gallon still, hardly suitable for large-scale commercial production. Sutherland understandably failed to find a buyer and was re-licensed for 1827 - when it was noted that he produced a mere 472 gallons of spirits per year - but appears to have gone out of business soon after. Such distilleries, however, were on a small scale and had been set up generally by local farmers as a way of soaking up their surplus barley crop.

THE STORY OF GLENMORANGIE MALT WHISKY DISTILLING Introduction Chronology of Distilling The Early Days of Distilling Illicit Whisky Distilling STORIES AROUND THE DISTILLERY Introduction The Ancient Burgh The Immortal Walter Scott The White Lady GLENMORANGIE DISTILLERY Introduction Early Days at Glenmorangie Enmeshed in the local rural framework A comfortable little backwater Maltbarns into makeshift barracks New owners and the Roaring Twenties A return to older ways Progress has some advantages THE HISTORY OF THE AREA Introduction Earliest Times The Dark Ages Ross in the Middle Ages The Wars of Independence The Church of St Duthac at Tain The Reformation/Ross of Morangie