W&A Gilbey

Founded by brothers Walter and Alfred, W&A Gilbey started out as a specialist wine merchants in 1857 but quickly expanded into the production of gin. Their growth was particularly quick and their offices in London also included premises in Dublin and Edinburgh by 1859. Their presence in the latter included warehousing, allowing them to purchase Scotch whisky to bottle using their own brand names.

The last decades of the century saw the company invest heavily in is whisky operations, buying the Speyside distilleries of Glen Spey, Strathmill and Knockando in 1887,1895 and 1903, respectively. In 1905 they made their first moves into the popular new practice of using grain whisky in their blends and again showed their ambition by purchasing James Catto & Co of Aberdeen in 1916, securing a large supply of grain whisky stock in the process.

By the turn of the 20th century the company was also well-bedded into its partnership with John Jameson & Son, and in 1903 began marketing its Castle Grand JJ brand, an unblended pot still whiskey from Bow Street. The product later became known as Redbreast, a once-affectionate name for it used by the chairman at the time and adopted officially by the company in 1912.

The company’s Scotch and Irish whiskies, along with its gin and wine production kept it busy for the first half of the century before a period of intense change followed in the latter. In 1962 the company merged with United Wine Traders to form International Distillers & Vintners (IDV), a profitable alliance that brought fellow London blenders Justerini & Brooks into the fold. The latter had come without distilleries however, and IDV reassigned the license for Gilbey’s Knockando to it and well as a large proportion of production at the others.

In Ireland the company was faced by the new challenges presented by the Irish Distillers group in 1966, a new amalgamation of the country’s remaining three distilleries which resolved to phase out bulk sales in 1970, jeopardising the Redbreast brand. A special agreement was reached to continue supply for the brand, however the distiller shut Bow Street the following year as it moved to consolidate operations at a New Midleton distillery. The last Gilbey’s branded bottlings of Redbreast were then produced in 1985 before they sold the label to Irish Distillers.

In 1972, IDV had been acquired by Watney Mann which was promptly bought over by Grand Metropolitan. W&A Gilbey operated as a subsidiary of it and subsequently Diageo, created by the merger with Guinness plc in 1997. Diageo wound up its operations in 2010, retaining W&A Gilbey as a dormant company until dissolving it in January 2019.