Brian Morrison
The Morrison family’s whisky involvement runs back to the early 20th century, when Stanley P. Morrison established a whisky brokerage in Glasgow. That brokerage-era footing was where relationships, cask knowledge, and supply realities lived, long before most consumers ever spoke about “warehousing” or “wood policy.” It also set the tone for how the Morrisons operated practically, trade-facing, and deeply literate in stock.
By the early 1960s, that trade position became ownership, when, in 1963, the family acquired Bowmore distillery on Islay, moving from brokerage and blending relationships into distilling itself. The company expanded outward again in 1970 with the purchase of Glen Garioch, and later, in 1984, with Auchentoshan. The company’s portfolio was now a working set of assets that required production decisions, inventory planning, and the slow discipline of maturation to keep brands supplied and credible.
W. Brian Morrison had been born in June 1944, but he had entered the family whisky business as a “green” 20-year-old in late 1964, joining a firm that was already shifting from brokerage roots into distilling ownership and brand-building. His older brother, Stanley W. Morrison, known as “Tim,” was the other central figure of that generation. First working under his Tim’s tutelage at Morrison Bowmore Distillers, he eventually rose to become Managing Director and served as one of the people responsible for keeping Bowmore’s production reputation and commercial direction aligned during the decades when Islay malts became international reference points rather than local specialties.
That period also overlapped with a major structural change in Scotch: the shift from bulk, blending-led economics to premium, bottled single malts as branded exports. Morrison Bowmore’s own corporate history reflects that pivot, describing an evolution toward cased sales and the consolidation of maturation and bottling functions on a large Glasgow site at Springburn Bond. Those unglamorous decisions regarding plant, warehousing, and packaging infrastructure that were made by Morrison during that time often determined whether a family distiller could keep pace with global demand without sacrificing identity.
In 1994, the family sold Morrison Bowmore Distillers to Suntory, ending that chapter of direct Morrison ownership of Bowmore, Glen Garioch, and Auchentoshan. For Brian Morrison personally, it marked a line that many owner-operators never cross: the move from family control into a world where Scotch’s biggest names increasingly sat inside multinational portfolios.
Yet the Morrison whisky story did not collapse into nostalgia. The family later re-established itself as an independent bottler and blender through Morrison & Mackay, a business that grew out of acquiring a majority stake in the Scottish Liqueur Centre at Bankfoot in 2005. This “second act” put the Morrisons back into daily contact with casks, blending, and wood-led decision-making, skills that are foundational if a family intends to distill again rather than merely trade on heritage.
That intention became concrete in Perthshire. There, the Perth Distilling Company was established by members of the Morrison family, specifically to build and operate a single malt distillery at Aberargie, near Perth. The ownership structure is unusually direct for modern Scotch: the company is controlled entirely by Brian Morrison, his wife Kate, and their son Jamie. Jamie Morrison sits not as a symbolic “next generation,” but as an active director within the family’s operating structure. The distillery, logically called “Aberargie,” began distilling on 1 November 2017 on the family’s farm. Described as a “barley to bottle” operation: it utilizes Golden Promise, a heritage barley variety that has not been widely used by the whisky industry for years, grown right there on the farm. The whisky is distilled on site, matured and handled within the same integrated footprint. The site has capacity up to 750,000 litres of pure alcohol per year, and it was designed for a spirit character framed as rich, fruity, and waxy, with occasional peated runs. Morrison Scotch Whisky Distillers publicly signaled an inaugural release window tied to March 2026. That date confirms Aberargie as a true long project, stock laid down, held back, and released on a timetable that only distillers with capital patience can afford.
Seen as a whole, Brian Morrison’s whisky life traces a rare arc. He entered the family business in the 1960s as the Morrisons expanded from broking into ownership; he helped lead a portfolio that included one of Islay’s defining distilleries through the decades when single malt became a global language; he presided over the end of direct family ownership when the industry’s consolidation wave peaked; and then he returned to distilling beside his wife and son, in Perthshire, with a distillery designed around farm-grown barley and a deliberate production identity. So Aberargie, in that sense, is not a side project. It is the Morrison family legacy translated into a new physical plant. It places Brian Morrison’s name back where it began: not simply on paper ownership, but on spirit made, filled, and left to mature under a legacy family’s complete control.
Sources
Companies House (UK), “William Brian Morrison”, find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk
Whiskypedia, “Morrison Bowmore Distillers” | “Stanley P. Morrison” | “Aberargie Distillery opens…” | “Perth Distilling Company”, scotchwhisky.com
Morrison Scotch Whisky Distillers, “Our Distillery”, morrisondistillers.com
The Spirits Business, “Morrison family returns to distilling with Aberargie”, Georgie Collins, 11 February 2026, thespiritsbusiness.com
Whisky Magazine, “From Islay to Perthshire: The Morrison whisky dynasty’s new beginning”, Malcolm Triggs, 15 Aug 2022, whiskymag.com
Aberargie Distillery official website, “About Us”, aberargie.com
Some photos courtesy of thespiritsbusiness.com
Contributed by Tracy McLemore, Fairview, Tennessee USA
