White Horse Distillers

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Founded

1924

Company type

Blender, Distiller

White Horse Distillers is a former subsidiary of drinks giant, Diageo. The company was established in 1924 following the death of Sir Peter Mackie and reorganisation of his blending company, Mackie & Co. In renaming itself, White Horse Distillers became one of the few Scotch whisky companies to be named after one of its brands.

White Horse Distillers was amalgamated with the Distillers Company Limited in 1927. DCL and its successors, United Distillers and Diageo operated it as a subsidiary for the remainder of the 20th century before the latter dissolved the company in 2010. Although chiefly known for its blends, the company has historic connections to various single malt distilleries, including Lagavulin, Glen Elgin and the mythical Malt Mill.

1924

Founded

History

White Horse Distillers is a company with origins in the early 19th century, however the company was established in 1924. Its predecessor, Mackie & Co, was established in 1890 with the famously fiery Sir Peter Mackie at its helm. It launched the White Horse Cellar brand the following year, a popular blended Scotch that the new company took its name from.

Alongside its blended Scotch brands, White Horse Distillers also inherited distilleries from Mackie & Co, namely Lagavulin, Craigellachie and the legendary Malt Mill. The latter had been built by Peter Mackie 1908, intended to function as a replica of Laphroaig following a bitter court dispute with the neighbouring Islay distillery that removed Mackie & Co as its agent along with privileged access to its production for the company’s blends. It was this fiery temperament that Mackie had fought the seemingly irresistible growth of the Distillers Company Limited (DCL) with, however it took only 3 years after his death for the newly minted White Horse Distillers to succumb to its expansionist acquisition policy. It was the last of the big five blenders to do so, preceded by John Haig & Co, the amalgamated Buchanan-Dewer, and John Walker & Sons.

It was felt that the company’s best chance for the survival of its brands was to secure their finances under DCL, who in turn allowed White Horse Distillers to operate with the same sense of autonomy afforded to its other blenders. Their primary portfolio was the White Horse and Logan blends, however they also marketed single malt brands for Lagavulin and Glen Elgin, which DCL had granted it the licenses to.

When DCL was bought by Guinness and merged with Arthur Bell & Sons to become United Distillers in 1987, the new parent company reeled in and kept a firmer grip upon its subsidiaries. It also sought to centralise its single malt production, revoking the licenses from the blenders and returning them to the distilleries themselves. One of the rarer cases, the White Horse Distillers name remained on bottles of the new Lagavulin brand until the end of the 1990s however. The company became part of Diageo in 1997 when Guinness merged with Grand Metropolitan, and the new owners eventually dissolved White Horse Distillers in 2010. They do however continue to market the White Horse and Logan brands in select markets.