Whisky guides

A guide to the Scotch whisky regions: Campbeltown

Campbeltown might be the smallest Scotch whisky region, but it's also got one hell of a story. We take you through its remarkable history here and explain why such great whisky was always made here.

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When Campbeltown ruled

Making of Campbeltown

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Anyone who knows their Scotch whisky will be aware that the category is divided into distinct, legally-defined regions. Speyside, Islay, Highland (which the Islands are technically a part of), Lowland, and Campbeltown.

Campbeltown is a town located on the Kintyre Peninsula in the west of Scotland. It’s not an island, which people sometimes get confused. It’s also the smallest malt whisky designation. It’s home to just three distilleries. The most famous of these is Springbank, which produces three uniquely different Scotch single malts: Longrow (peated and double distilled whisky), Hazelburn (unpeated and triple distilled) and its eponymous releases (medium-peated and two-and-a-half-times distilled).

There’s also Glen Scotia and the relative newcomer on the scene, Glengyle which releases whisky under the Kilkerran brand.

When Campbeltown ruled Scotch whisky

But, it wasn’t always so. The town, which you might be familiar with if you enjoy golf, fishing or the music of the band The Beatles could have been, was once known as ‘the whisky capital of the world’.

Whisky has been made in Campbeltown for some time and it was once filled with illicit distillation. By the end of the 18th century, there was an estimated 31 illegal stills. This was not unique to Campbeltown, it was the case across Scotland prior to the 19th century and specifically the 1823 Excise Act, which led to a boom of legal distillery by reducing opportunities for evading tax on distilled spirits and bringing in a reasonable fee of £10 for licensing a still. It also set duty levels for distilled spirits, allowing warehousing of distilled spirits before duty needed to be paid, and outlined the setup and regulation of a whisky distillery. The Scotch Whisky Association explains: “Its aim was to create a level playing field for distillers, generate a source of income for grain farmers in Scotland, and ultimately ensure a supply of consistent, quality spirit for consumers to enjoy”.

At its height in the 19th century, Campbeltown was home to over 30 distilleries. Victorian writer Alfred Barnard visited 21 of them in 1885 while researching his classic Whisky Distilleries of the United Kingdom (1887), witnessing a peninsula collectively producing nearly 2m gallons of spirit a year. He dubbed the town ‘whisky city’, reporting on a thriving area home to prosperous fishers and farmers. Not to mention distillers, one of a select few core industries that were the lifeblood of the town.

The reports then were of boom and prosperity. Distilleries like Dalaruan, Kinloch, and Scotia had undergone expansion, Dalintober’s warehouses were extended, Glenside had undergone renovations, while what was billed as the largest malt barn in Campbeltown was built at Benmore along with a new kiln furnace. Hazelburn alone was reported to be capable of producing 250,000 gallons of spirit a year. By the end of the 19th century, Campbeltown was said to have the highest income per capita in the UK.

The making of Campbeltown

So why was Campbeltown such an epicenter of whisky? In his book The Whiskies of Scotland (1967), R.J.S McDowall summarises: “From the point of whisky making Campbeltown is ideal. It has good supplies of water, coal, and peat and in the early much of its barley was grown locally. It is rather a surprise to see so much arable land in such a western place but no doubt the Gulf Stream makes it warmer than it otherwise would be”.

Campbeltown’s location was the key. It boasted a significant natural harbour in the age of the steamship which would not only bring the goods in (peat from the Hebrides and barley), but also was the base for considerable trade routes that would bring the whisky back out again to go to Glasgow, London, and beyond. It also allowed the population to travel and spread the good word of Campbeltown and its whisky. Its proximity to Ireland would have brought supplementary distillation expertise too. But it also boasted supplies locally. Much of the barley was grown in the fertile fields of the Kintyre. There were bogs for peat, the Drumlemble mine near Machrihanish for coal, and pure water from Crosshill Loch.

This culmination of so many advantages was not squandered by the distillers of the day, who use it to create characterful, full-bodied, oily, salty, smoky whisky. It was in high demand for blenders who paired it with the lighter, sweeter mainland malts and creamy grain whiskies. “There was a time when the Campbeltown malts were known as the Hector of the West, the deepest voice of the choir - a compliment indeed,” McDowall says.

The beautiful Campbeltown

The downfall of Campbeltown

But whisky is a boom-bust industry, and with every rise came a fall. Things went from Millhouse to Milpool in the early Victorian years as more than a dozen distilleries closed in the town. Several stood together on one street called Longrow, which also gave its name to a distillery that ran from 1824 to 1896. One of its warehouses survived as the bottling hall for Springbank, giving what Michael Jackson described as a “bittersweet validity” to the notion that Springbank produced and bottled a whisky of that name. In Barnard’s Whisky Distilleries of the United Kingdom (1887) he doesn’t mention Meadowburn, which closed a year after his visit in 1886, suggesting production had already ceased.

This was sadly not the peak of the downturn, but a tragic precursor to what was to come. As the 20th century progressed, Campbeltown’s whisky industry declined. A total of 17 distilleries shut their doors in the 1920s alone, with only Rieclachan still distilling. By 1934, it too was gone, and the once bright flame was kept burning just about by the restart in production by twin survivors of Springbank and Scotia.

The world wars and Prohibition had a devastating effect on whisky as a whole. However, the challenges that Campbeltown faced were heightened by the closure of the Drumlemble coal mine in 1923 and post-WWI duty hikes, which created an ecological nightmare that left the peninsula teeming with effluent.

‘Success, however, contained the seeds of destruction’

In Whisky (1930) Aeneas MacDonald lists 10 active distilleries (by the time his book was published, only Springbank, Scotia, and Rieclachan were still there and two had temporarily ceased production), but laments that 17 had been in operation recently. He writes: “The Campbeltowns are the double basses of the whisky orchestra. They are potent, full-bodied, pungent whiskies, with a flavour that is not to the liking of everyone… Yet, if the full repertoire of whisky is not to be irremediably impoverished the Campbeltowns must remain.”

But his warning wasn’t heeded. McDowall summarises how, when the financial slump came in the late 1920s, the public and the blenders became more choosey and turned their noses at the Campbeltown ‘stinking fish’ especially when plenty of good whisky from the Highlands was available. The whisky, once prized for its oily, pungent, and smoky nature went out of fashion as lighter whisky was in demand. This perhaps explains why Springbank survived. In this era one of its two spirit stills was used for the re-distillation of foreshots and feints, creating a whisky that McDowall explains was “full-flavoured, very pleasant, light… somewhat reminiscent of Rosebank, the Lowland malt.”

He also outlines another factor that has been recognised as a contributor to the downfall, which is that “the poor distilleries destroyed the reputation of the others”. Declining sales meant lower prices which in turn forced distillers to cut corners to save money. Stills were run harder, quality was sacrificed, and demand dwindled. “'Success, however, contained the seeds of destruction’ for some distilleries, in order to satisfy demand, began to put poor spirit into poor casks to satisfy the rapidly growing population of Glasgow and its whisky speculators,” says McDowall.

Glen Scotia survived and is now thriving

Hanging in there

Both Springbank and Glen Scotia are still around today obviously, but they didn’t survive the 20th century unscathed either. The former shut down temporarily in 1926 due to the effects of Prohibition, then operated again from 1936 to 1979 when economic conditions forced it to close. it reopened in 1989 and has thrived since then and is now a cult favourite.

Today Glen Scotia is getting close to that kind of reputation, but it too only made it by the skin of its teeth. It nearly closed in 1924 when distilleries were shuttering all over Campbeltown, Ben Nevis distillery founder Duncan MacCallum kept it afloat until 1928. Having lost all his money in a dodgy business deal, he tragically drowned himself in Campbeltown Loch two years later and his ghost is said to haunt the distillery to this day. In 1930, the distillery was bought by a company called Bloch Bros. which owned Scapa and Glengyle, and the name Glen was added to Scotia. The usual passing through various hands occurred for Glen Scotia in this era as it did for many Scotch distilleries, with even Canadian giant Hiram Walker having a go, and despite £1m in refurbishment in 1979, Glen Scotia shit between 1984 and 1989. Production restarted sporadically in 1994 before it was fully operational in 1999.

Campbeltown went from the distillery capital to something of a whisky ghost town. Renewed interest came from the popularity of the folk song titled "Campbeltown Loch, I wish you were whisky" in the 1960s, but there was no sign of a genuine upturn. Whisky writer Michael Jackson, as usual, painted quite a picture in his final book Whisky (2005). “Wandering around Campbeltown is an exercise in distillery archaeology. Tantalising glimpses of old sites remain – a cracked and faded painted sign, the shape of the windows on a block of flats, the incongruous sight of a supermarket with a pagoda roof. The fragility of the whisky industry is evident and, for all the thick red sandstone walls that remain, there are infinitely more that have gone.”

Revival and renewed optimism

Since its great decline, it’s been a long, patient, and increasingly rewarding comeback for Campbeltown. The fact that it’s even a region speaks to how important it is a whisky-making area, because on size alone it doesn’t warrant distinction. In 2009, The Scotch Whisky Regulations defined Campbeltown as a region, comprising ‘the South Kintyre ward of the Argyll and Bute Council as that ward is constituted in the Argyll and Bute (Electoral Arrangements) Order 2006(a)’.

The reputation of Springbank with its complex and rare whisky soared and helped give the region new life, enough that in 2004 a distillery opened rather than closed. Glengyle Distillery, creators of Kilkerran whisky, was established in the same location where the distillery previously operated in the 19th century before closing in 1925 by J & A Mitchell & Company Ltd., which also owns the Springbank, making it the area’s first ‘new’ distillery for over 125 years.

Then in the early part of 2022 came more promise and cause for optimism. First with the news that Campbeltown would welcome its first original new distillery in over 180 years thanks to R&B Distillers. The Edinburgh-headquartered brand behind the Isle of Raasay Distillery announced that it purchased Dhurrie Farm on the Kintyre peninsula in the remote Argyll & Bute port intending to spend £10 to £15 million to develop a sustainable net-zero distillery. The plan is for it to not only support biological farming practices and create greater biodiversity on the farmland but also create employment opportunities, with over 20 jobs expected to be filled. For a remote area in a time of economic hardship, this is massive.

It turns out distilleries are very much like buses. They’re massive and full of great spirits. No, wait, that’s not what we meant to say. They’re like buses because you wait for one for ages and then a bunch show up. Just a few days after that announcement came news that the Dál Riata Distillery was to open. Named after the ancient kingdom that existed on the western coast of Scotland and northeast Ireland between the 6th and 9th Centuries, plans have been submitted for the distillery to be located on Kinloch Road overlooking Campbeltown Loch, by Bowman Stewart Architects of Lochgilphead.

The Campbeltown region may be small, but it’s mighty. It has a big place in the history of Scotch whisky and visiting is vital for any fans who want to glimpse at not only what once was, but what is come. The Campbeltown Malts Festival is every May and celebrates this distinctive, authentic whisky with real heritage. Make sure you get yourself a bottle of something delicious and find out why it’s worth all the fuss.