The crazy world of James Grant
With Glen Grant up for sale it’s timely to look at the man behind the distillery. Iain Russell reports
Major James Grant was the archetypal Victorian laird. Short in stature and stocky of build, he dressed for most occasions in his Grant tartan kilt and Glengarry bonnet.
He spent long hours fishing on the River Spey or bagging grouse on a Highland moor, and he travelled half way round the world to hunt big game in India and Africa. He loved dancing and female company, and survived three marriages and one very public divorce.
And when he wasn’t seriously busy at play, the Major kept himself occupied running one of the most famous distilleries in Speyside.
Grant was born in 1847. His lawyer father and his whisky-smuggling uncle had founded Glen Grant Distillery in Rothes seven years earlier, and young James inherited the business in 1872.
He became an officer in the local Rifle Volunteers, the Territorial Army of its day, and rose swiftly to the rank of Major – largely due to his status as one of Rothes’ largest employers, and his generous contributions towards the costs of providing the part-time soldiers with their uniforms and drams.
The Major was a great fan of the latest technology. The journalist Alfred Barnard reckoned that Glen Grant became the first distillery in Scotland to be lit by electricity, when a generator was installed there in 1883, and it was one of the first to be equipped with drum maltings and a patented draff-drying machine.
He was also intrigued by that new-fangled invention, the motor car, and he hurtled along the narrow Speyside roads in a .....
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By Iain Russell
Section : Whisky History
Page number : 48
