Described in the Scottish Parliament in July 1690 as an “ancient brewery of aquavity”, the Ferintosh estate distillery had not been in operation for time immemorial but for less than 30 years. After Duncan ‘Grey’ Forbes of Aberdeenshire bought the barony of Ferintosh in 1625, he later purchased the Bunchrew Estate in 1670, where he set up a small still in the 1670s. While Forbes was in Holland supporting Protestant William III and Mary II in 1689, his estate was destroyed by Montrose’s Catholic Jacobite troops. Valuing the damage at £52,000, the Crown and Parliament compensated the Forbes family by granting them the perpetual privilege to distil grain into aqua vitae in lieu of paying excise duty. Serendipitously, four months before the privilege was granted, the Gaelic-Goidelic word ‘isque-bagh’ first appeared in Scotland. Ferintosh and aquavity became the vernacular for Scotch.
Since the late 15th century, monastic stillories and household alembics have distilled spirits in Scotland for medicinal elixirs and victual preservation. In July 1505, the Edinburgh guilds of Barbers and Surgeons and the Apothecaries were granted monopolistic patents to distil aqua vitae. By the early 17th century, small estates with single stills were starting to distil surplus produce into Scottish genever and flavoured spirits, such as Robert Haig at Throsk farm near Stirling.
Forbes regularly faced challenges concerning the privilege. In 1695, Parliament imposed a nominal annual fee of £22/4s/5d. After a neighbour failed to annul his commercial advantage in 1703, the court restricted Forbes’ mashing of barley and oats to his estate-grown grain. In March 1707, with the Act of Union with England, Parliament preserved its rights, later adjusting the pro-rata in 1713 against the new malt duty and lower yields from Scottish bere.
During the second Jacobite Rebellion in 1745, Forbes’ Culloden House and lands were again pillaged, resulting in a loss of £20,000. The family amassed wealth from the privilege, purchasing more land to expand the estate from 1,800 arable acres in 1690 to 6,500 by the 1760s while facing accusations of breaching their privilege by importing grain from surrounding counties. In the 1660s, the Forbes erected three additional distilleries on farms acquired at nearby Ryefield, Gallowhill, and Alcraig, and upgraded their original aquavity on Mulchaich farm at Bunchrew in 1782. Commentators speculated that Ferintosh’s legal and cheaper whisky accounted for more than half of Scotch consumption.
Ferintosh’s peak production year was 1784, in which it distilled 268,503 spirit gallons on 25 40-gallon pot stills, representing 36 per cent of legal spirits in Scotland. In 1782, it began exports to London, supplying spirit to petty distillers and rectifiers to compound into gin and English brandy. From 1777, larger and modern Lowland distilleries opened at an unprecedented pace, particularly Stein’s Kilbagie and Kennetpans, and Haig’s Cannonmills and Lochrin distilleries, entering cross-border competition with England’s 12 large capital malt distilleries producing millions of spirit gallons for the English compounding market. In 1785, Scottish exports to London reached 837,751 gallons. Forbes’ profitable excise-free goods generated further resentment amongst the Lowland distillers.
The 1784 Wash Act and lobbying efforts by the Lowland distillers led to the Court of the Exchequer withdrawing the royal privilege in December 1785, valued at more than £7,000 a year, while only paying the annual fee of £72/18s/11d. Descendant Duncan George Forbes received compensation of £21,850. Without excise relief, Forbes’ production faced immediate financial decline, with production ceasing in 1788. “Thee Ferintosh! O’sadly lost!” of Robert Burns’ 1818 poem was not lost but merely copied. During the 1790s, dozens of small distilleries operated in the Ferintosh district, even selling Ferintosh whisky. In 1893, the Ben Wyvis Distillery, built in 1879, was renamed the Ferintosh Distillery, closing in 1926. Ghosts and imitators of Ferintosh continue to rock Scotland’s ancient isque cradle.
