Distillery Focus: Understanding historic Littlemill distillery

In the first of our new ‘distillery focus’ series, Head of Valuations Scott Walker takes us through the twists and turns of historic Littlemill distillery.

Distilleries come and go and many in Scotland have sadly perished over the decades. These lost distilleries no doubt add to the mystique and intrigue for collectors and whisky enthusiasts, and the rarity of the remaining whisky stocks helps these distilleries to achieve impressive prices at auction.

One such distillery is historic Littlemill which, like many others, has a turbulent past with numerous changes of ownership, periods of closure and sadly, eventual demolition. During over two centuries in operation however it contributed to the whisky world through innovation in distilling techniques and the creation of wonderful malt.

The Beginning

History tends to be a little murky on various distillery’s claims to be the oldest in Scotland. Undoubtedly many were distilling long before they became ‘official’ but, as far as unearthed public records show, to date Littlemill can lay sole claim to being the first licensed distillery in Scotland.

The Auchentorlie Estate was bought in 1750 by Archibald Buchanan and his purchase included Littlemill brewery which supplied beer to, among others, the monks at Paisley Abbey. Exactly when distilling began on the site is unclear but we know from dated gable stones that accommodation for excisemen was built on site in 1772 and just a year later Robert Muir was granted the first license to sell ‘ale, beer, and other excisable liquors’ by the government of King George III on 2nd November 1773, as recorded in the Justice of the Peace documents for Dumbarton.

Accounts tell of earlier distillation taking place on the site, with some sources claiming it may have been taking place as early as the 14th century.

Situated in the village of Bowling by the river Clyde just outside Glasgow, not far from neighboring Auchentoshan, Littlemill was ideally placed with transport routes on the river and via the Forth & Clyde Canal as well as the North British Railway. Despite these links which should have given the distillery a distinctive commercial advantage the business changed hands frequently over its early history.

Arguably the distillery’s first period of relative stability arrived with the ownership of the Hay family who bought Littlemill in 1857. In the years leading up to this, the distillery had changed ownership as many as eight times. During the Hay family’s tenure there was another first for Littlemill with Jane Macgregor becoming Scotland’s first female licensee in 1823.

The Hays’ invested in expanding and improving the distillery and by 1875 it had been rebuilt to have the capacity to meet demand. By the time of Alfred Barnard’s visit in the mid-1880s, the distillery was producing around 150,000 gallons of spirit annually.

The Hays family sold the distillery to Yoker Distillery Co. in 1913, starting a further period of unrest for Littlemill which, once again, went through the hands of multiple owners including Charles McKinley and J&G Thompson before closing down in 1929.

Innovation

In 1931, the distillery reopened under the stewardship of its first American owner, Duncan Thomas, whose approach to distilling saw some significant changes to the distillery. As well as ending the traditional Lowland practice of triple distillation and replacing it with double distillation, among the innovations Thomas introduced was the installation of new hybrid stills combining pot still bodies with rectifying columns replacing the traditional swan necks, a precursor to the Lomond Still. This allowed the distiller to have greater control over the profile of the whisky created by moving the collecting plates. In addition, Thomas as also installed a new style Saladin box for malting featuring two ventilation towers and a single kiln.

The pioneering nature of Littlemill under Thomas’ tenure also saw it produce two other brands along with the light, traditional Lowland style of Littlemill; a heavily peated expression called Dumbuck, never officially bottled, and another peated expression called Dunglass. Both expressions were likely used mostly as blending components, but some official and independent bottlings of Dunglass can occasionally be found at auction.

Last Days

In 1971, Barton Brands, who had held shares in the distillery since 1959, bought Littlemill from Thomas. The distillery was mothballed in 1984 before briefly reopening between 1989, when it was bought by Gibson International. This was short lived with closure coming again in 1994 when the company went bankrupt. By 1997, Littlemill had been dismantled and a fire in 2004 destroyed much of the remaining structures. Now there are flats where the distillery once stood. The remains of the Distillery Manager’s house could, until recently, still be seen but had fallen into such disrepair that permission was given in 2022 for the last remnant of the site to be demolished.

Littlemill was bought by Loch Lomond Distilling Company in 1994, who still own the remaining stocks and continue to bottle the malt in limited releases. Begun in 2023, some of the characters that played a significant part in the story of Littlemill are being honoured in the Vanguards Collection, which will see some of the last available liquid bottled in four releases. Selected by Loch Lomond’s Master Blender Michael Henry, the first release, a 1977 45 Year Old, celebrates Robert Muir, the first license holder at the distillery. The recent second release, this time a 1976 47 Year Old, honours Jane Macgregor, Scotland’s first female licensee.

While these premium releases of rare malt are out of the reach of most drinkers with their five figure price tags, keep a look out at auction for the chance to buy bottles of the malt distilled by this storied and innovative distillery that are much friendlier on the wallet. Due to predominantly being used in blends, much of the single malt Littlemill found at auction is bottled by independent bottlers such as Signatory Vintage and Cadenhead’s, there is though, still frequent opportunities to bid on distillery release bottles such as the 8 year old malt bottled in the 1980s and 1990s.

See previous Littlemill auction lots here.

Discover more about other ‘lost’ Scottish distilleries here.