DISTILLING IN THE CABRACH, C. 1800–1850: THE ILLICIT ORIGINS OF THE SCOTCH WHISKY INDUSTRY KIERAN GERMAN AND GREGOR ADAMSON Abstract. This article challenges Devine’s assumptions that clandestine whisky- making developed into a legitimate industry. The article argues that the 1820s distilling laws marked a key transition in the whisky industry. The illicit manufacture and trade of whisky in Highland Scotland was deliberately sundered to be supplanted by entrepreneurs and landowners, many of whom had supported or shaped the legislative developments, to legitimise their endeavour. In so doing, the direction of the whisky industry was changed with uneven social and economic consequences across the region, including consequential and coercive Highland depopulation, but which undoubtedly prompted a significant step forward in the quality, scale and reach of Scotch whisky. The article poses a series of key questions: was there continuity between smugglers and legal distilleries? How were legal distilleries founded and developed as businesses following 1823? What were the social and economic impacts of the 1822–3 legislation and the subsequent distilling industry on the Highland communities which distilled prior to 1822? Keywords. whisky, distilling, Cabrach, Excise, illicit trade The distillery laws of 1822 and 1823 brought to an abrupt end a shadow industry of illicit distilling and smuggling in the Scottish Highlands and supported in its place a legal and lucrative industry. 1 These laws had been preceded by three decades of botched legislation which had inadvertently promoted illicit distilling. Across Scotland whisky was manufactured illegally, evading the rangers of the excise and often with the connivance of local communities. The 1 1822 Illicit Distillation (Scotland) Act and the 1823 Excise Act. Journal of Scottish Historical Studies 39.2, 2019, 146–165 DOI: 10.3366/jshs.2019.0274 © Edinburgh University Press 2019 www.euppublishing.com/jshs 146