John Gordon Smith (1840 - 1901)

Born 1840 in Glenlivet, Scotland, UK

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Biography

From Glenlivet website [1]

John Gordon Smith was the son of George Smith, founder of the Glenlivet Distillery. In 1850, G. Smith had leased a second distillery at Delnabo, dubbed the Cairngorm distillery. He handed management of this one to his youngest son, John Gordon.

George Smith died in 1871, but his legacy lived on in his son and heir to the Glenlivet distillery, John Gordon Smith, just as much as it did in the spirit in the casks.

John’s first task was to protect his inheritance from those who were taking advantage of the desirability of the single malt from Speyside. Sailors on delivery boats were siphoning off the casks during transit, and competing distillers were labelling bottles of their whiskies as Glenlivet.

In 1876 John filed a request to trademark the name Glenlivet to put an end to the activities of the impostors. After two years of legal wrangling, the case was settled. John won the exclusive right to call his whisky ‘The Glenlivet’, definitively marking it as the single malt that started it all.

As The Glenlivet’s popularity grew, the distillery saw new additions. Between 1890 and 1899, a new malt barn was built and a second pair of stills installed. This also led to more jobs being created, with cottages built for many of the distillery workers. A community was being founded on malt and mash.

In 1895, a telephone was installed at Minmore. The electricity soon followed, even before the University of Glasgow had access to this new technology. Both these marvels of the time soon became indispensable to the running of the distillery.

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