The one that got away
Ian R Mitchell tells some tales of the Donside illicit whiskymakers.
Speyside whisky is world-renowned.
And everyone has heard of the Royal Lochnagar distillery on Deeside. But between these two major rivers of North East Scotland lies a more modest watercourse, the River Don. The Don no longer produces whisky, but it once did. The fertile reaches of Upper Donside (Strathdon) were for many years bandit country, where hundreds of sma stills were concealed in the surrounding hillsides. The pot still, fondly named the âYowie wi the crookit hornâ (Anglicised âewe with the crooked hornâ) brought a brief prosperity to Strathdon in the century following the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745.
Upper Donside had been Jacobite territory and Corgarff Castle was garrisoned by Hanoverian troops after the â45 Rebellion. In the years following the Jacobite defeat, the sma stills spread across the land. Looking back on this period in 1845, the Minister of the Kirk of Scotland at Strathdon stated: âThis parish was one of the strongholds of smuggling. The inhabitants of Corgarff, the glens, and not a few of the lower part of the parish were professed smugglers. The Revenue officers were set at defiance. To be engaged in illicit distillation was neither looked upon as a crime, nor considered a disgrace.â Defiance was indeed the watchword. And in the upper reaches of lonely Glen Noughty, a side glen off Strathdon, stands today, and is marked on the O.S.map, a ruin called Duffdefiance. A man had been evicted from Glenlivet for illicit distilling. Unabashed.....
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By Ian R Mitchell
Section : Whisky history
Page number : 58
