A talk with John Harvey McDonough of the Speyside Distillery, a small hand-built distillery nestled in the foothills of the Cairngorm mountains. Widely acknowledged to be the prettiest of all Scotland’s distilleries, Speyside still manufactures whisky the traditional way.
“What we wanted to do was to embrace the local community and to make sure the local community was aware that an international success story, which is the Spey brand, was on their doorstep.” — John McDonough, Speyside Distillery
Podcast excerpts. Interview by Drew Hendry
Drew: Originally a barley mill and croft dating back to the 1700s, after its closure in 1965 it’s been subject to long-term and sensitive restoration and has been converted into a single malt distillery, which started producing spirit in 1990. Quality, tradition, community and family are the components for business success according to John Harvey McDonough. Indeed, his business is driven by family history. As in 2012, he realized his grandfather’s dream of returning to distilling when his company Harvey’s bought Speyside Distillers.
I asked him how important family values are to him and to the business.
John: I think it’s integral to the success. I worked with IDV, with Diageo now, and I learned about brand marketing, but the core of our business is the ethics that my grandfather fed into myself and my father and my sister. So, the family element of that is absolutely critical and we stick to those family ethics and family drives. And that resonates I think throughout the Spey family now, the bigger family, which is all the people that work with us and help us.
Drew: The Harvey family have long established roots in the whisky trade stretching back to 1770 when John and Robert Harvey founded and operated distilleries in Glasgow. In the 1800s, the families established a distillery on Islay, which was eventually run by William Harvey until hit by a fire closely followed by William’s death in 1936. How much of that Harvey family intergenerational drive for quality, played a part in where Speyside is now?
John: It plays a lot, so that the Harvey’s family go back to 1770, built Yorker Distillery and Dundashill Distillery in Glasgow, both of which have gone, but in 1881 built Bruichladdich in Islay. My grandfather worked as a whisky trader; his wish was that we could come back into distilling. So, I’m pleased that we’ve been able to fulfil his wish with the Speyside Distillery. And it’s just honing the family ethics again, and the desire of the family to produce really high-quality single malt whisky.
Drew: In time the distillery itself also became ‘Lagganmore’ for the TV series ‘Monarch of the Glen’, popular for its depiction of the fictional community around it. But in the real community Speyside is investing heavily in the local area. For example, setting up The Snug, a high-end retail and tasting experience in nearby Aviemore. How is that going?
John: It’s going pretty well. That’s been very successful from day one. And what we wanted to do was to embrace the local community and to make sure the local community was aware that an international success story, which is the Spey brand, was on their doorstep. We wanted to embrace the distillery and expand the awareness through The Snug. So that’s been very, very successful.
Listen to the full Podcast to learn more about Speyside Distillery and the family traditions which are the backbone to the business.