Caermory

Caermory History

In a word, the history of this brand is fascinating. In 1992 Harold Currie (ex-Pernod Ricard and Isle of Arran Distillers), Stewart Jowett (then owner of Tobermory distillery) and Derek Hewson (a tax and revenue consultant) planned to get Tobermory distillery, which had been silent since 1982, up and running again.

The trio created the Spirit of 1992 PLC as a Business Expansion Scheme (BES) project, which exempted investors from paying capital gains tax.

The group issued the plan to potential investors on 16 September 1992 – Black Wednesday – but luckily managed to attract investment of £750,000. Distillation started in March 1993 on Tobermory’s two copper pot stills, which hadn’t been used for around a decade.

As soon as Spirit of 1992 had finished distilling, Jowett sold Tobermory to Burn Stewart Distillers, but the BES retained the 150,000 litres of spirit it had distilled.

In 1998 the company sold what had become five-year-old single malt whisky as bulk, and bottled just 888 bottles as ‘single malt Scotch whisky from the Isle of Mull’. It wasn’t until later the whisky became known as Caermory.

Hewson had kept his own stock of 20 hogsheads in bond to allow him to release it for sale at a later date, bottled as Caermory by Hunter Laing & Co. Three single casks have been bottled to-date with an approximate outturn of 280 bottles per cask, although some hogsheads have been traded to Hunter Laing wholesale.

There are plans for a 25-year-old but this may turn on whether Hewson feels his investment would be better realised by selling his remaining stock to the trade.