The eponymous John Walker was born on a farm near Kilmarnock in 1805 to parent, Alexander Walker and Elizabeth Gemmel. Sadly, Alexander passed away when John was only fourteen. The decision was made to sell the farm, the funds for which were used to purchase a grocery store in the town. It was this shop that would become John Walker & Sons, a respected wine and spirits merchant.
The company’s transition into blending came at the encouragement of John’s son, Alexander, in the 1850s. By the following decade it was selling 100,000 gallons of its own blended whisky every year and it opened its new headquarters in London in 1880 before buying its first distillery, Cardhu, in 1893.
The company’s biggest rivals in the 19th century had been James Buchanan & Co, John Haig & Co, John Dewar & Sons, and Mackie & Co (later White Horse Distillers). This all changed in 1877 with the creation of the Distillers Company Limited, which would go on to dominate the Scotch whisky market. The blending families had worked together in opposition to it, but ultimately each succumbed to its aggressive acquisition policy, John Walker & Sons alongside Buchanan-Dewar in 1925. By this time the company had acquired several malt distilleries, including Mortlach, Dailuaine, and a share in what is now Brora.
Despite its aggressive expansionism, DCL operated very much from the shadows as the owner of these companies, who were permitted to do business with a degree of autonomy. The company licensed the malt distilleries to its blenders depending on its needs, and they were free to market single malt brands for them if those to. John Walker and Sons did so with Cardhu, Mortlach and latterly Talisker.
When Guinness bought DCL in 1986 and merged it with Arthur Bell & Sons to create United Distillers, one of the new entity’s first orders of business was to reclaim control and distribution of its single malts, beginning a process of ending its blenders’ unique associations to distilleries. The process also saw the subsidiary blenders become more closely managed, with some dissolved entirely. John Walker & Sons has been a dormant company since the turn of the century, with parent company Diageo managing its brands directly. They now use the John Walker & Sons name as a brand for their prestige blended Scotch products.
