John Simson

John P. Simson was born around 1745 and enters the whisky record not in an inherited distilling tradition, but as a merchant shaped by the practical realities of late-18th-century Islay.  It is possible that whisky distillation on Islay started in the early 1770s, and Simson may have operated an even earlier distillery for the Laird of Islay at his Bridgend estate. But when he established what became Bowmore Distillery in 1779, Islay was undergoing a quiet but significant transformation. The island’s landlords, particularly the Campbells, were attempting to impose order, improve rents, and regularize trade by encouraging planned settlements and licensed enterprise.

Like many of the other Islay distilleries, Bowmore was established as a “farming distillery.” Its land grant came with farmland where the barley intended for whisky distillation would be grown. The village of Bowmore (which means “great reef” in Gaelic) itself was still young, laid out only a decade earlier as a planned town with straight streets and coastal access designed to facilitate commerce rather than subsistence farming. In fact, all the Kildalton distilleries, (Lagavulin, Laphroaig, and Ardbeg), were all farming distilleries, retaining their associated farmland until well into the 19th century.

In any case, Simson’s background aligns squarely with that environment. He was a merchant and trader, a role that placed him within Islay’s emerging commercial class rather than among its tenant farmers. Merchants on Islay in this period often dealt simultaneously in grain, spirits, general provisions, and coastal shipping, and Simson operated comfortably in that multi-purpose world. His decision to build a distillery at Bowmore was therefore not speculative: it was a calculated extension of existing trade networks that connected Islay to mainland Scotland by sea.

The distillery Simson established in 1779 was legally licensed, a fact that distinguished Bowmore sharply from much Islay production in those days. While illicit distilling was widespread, and in most areas culturally accepted, Simson chose compliance. Licensing required capital, political goodwill, and a degree of confidence in long-term stability. It also suggests that Simson anticipated not merely local consumption, but external markets where legality mattered. The site he selected, directly adjacent to Loch Indaal, reinforced that intention. From the beginning, Bowmore’s whisky could be loaded onto vessels and shipped quickly and fearlessly, without the overland bottlenecks of inland distilleries or the potential legal issues that beleaguered the black-marketers.

By the final decades of the 18th century, Bowmore was already functioning as more than a small farm distillery. Excise records from the period show consistent operation, indicating that Simson maintained production through years when enforcement tightened and thus weaker enterprises disappeared. That consistency implies not only technical competence but also managerial discipline: grain supply contracts honored, excise duties paid, and output maintained at a commercially viable scale.

Simson’s prominence on Islay extended beyond distilling. He held property in Bowmore and participated often in the island’s civic and economic life during a period when merchants were increasingly influential intermediaries between landlords and tenants. His position placed him at the junction of agriculture, transport, and manufacture, exactly where a successful legal distillery needed to stand. The Bowmore operation benefited from this integration, drawing on local barley, coastal shipping, and warehousing practices already familiar to Simson’s business dealings.

When John Simson died in 1816, Bowmore did not collapse or fade, which is itself a measure of how firmly the distillery had been established. Ownership passed to his son, James Simson, who continued to operate the distillery into the 1820s. This transition suggests that Bowmore was not merely John Simson’s personal venture, but a functioning commercial property capable of surviving generational change. Under James Simson, the distillery remained active during a period of major upheaval in the Scotch whisky industry, including further tightening Excise laws and the slow but steady shift toward larger-scale, more standardized production.

The Simson family’s tenure eventually ended in the 1830s, when Bowmore was sold to the Mutter family. By that time, however, the essential character of the distillery had already been cemented. It was legal, coastal, export-oriented, and embedded in the commercial life of Islay rather than isolated within it. Later proprietors modernized equipment, expanded capacity, and adapted Bowmore to the industrial age, but they did so on foundations laid by John Simson more than half a century earlier.

Bowmore entered the modern period of its history in 1963, when the distillery was purchased by Stanley P. Morrison Ltd., a Glasgow whisky broker. At that time, the number of stills was doubled to four, and the range of expressions offered by Bowmore was expanded. In 1994, the distillery conglomerated even more when Japanese brewing and distilling giant Suntory purchased the parent company.

John Simson left no known personal papers, portraits, or memoirs, and much of his private life, including his education, marriage details, and family beyond his son, remains frustratingly undocumented. What survives instead is the durable evidence of his judgment. In choosing legality when illegality was easier, scale when subsistence would have sufficed, and shoreline when inland isolation was more common, Simson created a distillery that outlived him by centuries. Bowmore’s later reputation as Islay’s oldest recorded distillery rests not on myth or accident, but on the quiet, deliberate decisions of a merchant who understood how whisky could move from island production to national trade.

Sources:

1. Bowmore distillery official website, “Our Heritage”, bowmore.com

2. Master of Malt, “A Guide to Islay…”, Adam O’Connell, masterofmalt.com

3. The Whisky Shop, “Bowmore , the Original Islay”, Declan Leach, 14 October 2019, whiskyshop.com

4. The Whisk(e)y Wash, “Bowmore: Islay’s Most Historic Whisky”, Joe Micallef, 05 December 2016

5. Whiskyciti, “Bowmore”, whiskyciti.com

6. Whiskipedia, “Bowmore Whisky Distillery”, whiskipedia.com

7. Difford’s Guide, “Bowmore Distillery”, diffordsguide.com

Contributed by Tracy McLemore, Fairview, Tennessee USA