Scotch Whiskey Supporters
& Contributors to the Industry
(NOTE: FOUNDERS ARE LISTED IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER)
1
Aeneas Coffee
Aeneas Coffey was an extraordinarily talented man with widespread interests. As such, he was able to rise quickly through the excise service ranks. He was appointed sub-commissioner of Inland Excise and Taxes in 1813 and Surveyor of Excise in 1815. By 1818 he was Acting Inspector General of Excise.
2
Charles Chree Doig
By 1890, Charles Doig was running his own practice, specializing in distilleries at exactly the right historical moment. Scotland, and specifically Speyside, was in a period of great expansion; new distilleries planned from scratch, older sites rebuilt, capacities pushed upward as demand for Scotch increased worldwide.
3
William Delme Evans
William Delmé Evans built an airstrip on Jura, obtained a pilot’s license, and flew a Cessna 172 so that commuting between his home and the island would not consume his workday. It is a telling detail: when distance threatened to slow him down, he did not merely complain, he engineered a solution.
4
Robert Stein
In 1826, Robert Stein patented his revolutionary whisky still. With the apparatus, he had devised a method of near-continuous distillation. This meant spirit could be produced much faster and more efficiently than had previously been the case with traditional pot stills, largely because pot stills had to be cleaned and recharged between batches.
5
Dr. Jim Swan
Dr. Jim Swan made scientific whisky research directly relevant to everyday production. By the late 1970s and into the 1980s, Swan was deep in the kind of work that quietly changes how an entire industry speaks and thinks. In 1979, he helped create the first Scotch whisky flavor wheel.