Speyside
A quiet player in the world of malt.
Campbell & Clark started out as a modest Glasgow-based blending company under the distiller Train & McIntyre. In its early days it bottled blends such as Clark’s Reserve and David Ross using malt whiskies from T&M’s distilleries, which included Benromach, Fettercairn and Glenury Royal. Its brands were produced exclusively for export markets, including the US and France, however following a change of ownership in the mid-20th century its bottlings became more obscure.
In its later years Campbell & Clark became something of a holding company for its two bottling subsidiaries – Colin Forbes Ross & Co, which produced the Trader’s, Lord Hastings and King’s Crest blended whiskies, and Douglas Murdoch & Co., which bottled several young expressions of Port Ellen, among others.
Campbell & Clark’s most recent independent bottlings include 1969 and 1970 25-year-old Glen Mhors, which were released in the mid 1990s.
Campbell & Clark was originally founded in 1934 as a blending and bottling subsidiary of Train & McIntyre Ltd., which went on to own several distilleries including Glenury Royal, Glenlochy, Fettercairn and Benromach.
The company established Colin Forbes Ross & Co. as an independent bottling subsidiary in 1953, but following World War II, Train & McIntyre’s owner, National Distillers, began selling off its Scottish assets. In 1960 Campbell & Clark was sold to George Christie’s Speyside Distillery Company, which was formed to build Speyside distillery near Kingussie, with America’s Sazerac Company Inc of New Orleans acquiring a 50% share the following year.
Christie created a second bottling company, Douglas Murdoch & Co., in 1970, though by 1983 both it and Colin Forbes Ross & Co had become dormant for trading purposes. Their brands were still marketed however.
In 1989 Christie bought Sazerac out of its 50% share to assume complete control of the operations.
The Speyside Distillery Company was sold to a private investment group headed by Christie’s son, Ricky, in 2000. Campbell & Clark was eventually dissolved in 2010.