Founded by William Teacher, who under new licensing laws, began selling his own blends in 1830. In 1832, he started to sell his blended Scotch from his wife’s grocery store in Glasgow. It was in 1863 that he perfected Teacher’s Highland Cream, a blend made up of over thirty different single malts and has a very high malt content to give a fuller, richer flavour. William Teacher died in 1876 and left the brand to his two sons, Adam and William Jr, who moved operations from Glasgow to St Enoch where the business remained until 1991.
To secure a good quantity of high quality malt whisky for the blend, Adam Teacher founded the Ardmore distillery in 1898. Ardmore remains one of the largest distilleries in Scotland, with a capacity of 5.1 million litres and provides a good deal of the character in the company’s signature blend, Highland Cream. As Prohibition ended, Teachers commenced American exportation in 1933, sending the first shipment on the Cunard steamer “Scythia”.
Demand increased as rationing halted after the end of the Second World War, so much so that the company required a further distillery. In 1957, Teachers purchased Glendronach. Today sales are huge and the brand is exported to over 100 countries. Teachers is a market leader in places such as India and Brazil. In 2007, 1.5 million cases were sold and Highland Cream constituted 7.6% of all blended Scotch sales in the UK.