A transatlantic visitor has provided a missing piece of the jigsaw in the story of one of Perthshire’s oldest businesses.
A recent visit to Glenturret Distillery in Crieff inspired a Canadian woman to share a cherished family photograph of her grandfather for the distillery archives.
Taken outside what is thought to have been the distillery manager’s house around 1902, it shows brewmaster John J. Stormont with his wife Mary and their three children, a few years before the family emigrated to Canada in 1905.
Jean Brown, from Blind Bay in Canada, retraced her grandfather’s footsteps recently and came to visit Scotland’s oldest working distillery and spoke to staff to add his history to the distillery’s archive of former employees.
The battered photograph shows Jean’s mother Jane in her father’s arms, with her uncle George and baby Mary.
George served with the Canadian Exemplary Force in the First World War and was wounded and died in 1918 in France, the same year as his parents died from the flu. Both sisters lived out their lives in Canada with Jane marrying an ex-British police officer.
General manager Stuart Cassells said they were delighted to learn about someone who had an important role in the distillery.
“Glenturret Distillery prides itself on its unique heritage and Jean’s photograph is a valuable addition to our employee archive, enabling us to illustrate the importance of the people who make our whisky,” he said.
“Our former stillmen and brewmasters will have used exactly the same techniques and, in some cases, equipment, as we continue to use today at Glenturret. It binds them all together across the centuries and, in this case, continents too.”
Another photograph of stillmen from the same era is the inspiration behind Fly’s 16 Masters Edition, one of Glenturret Distillery’s limited release single malts.
Named after the distillery dog from 1905, shown in a photo unearthed at Glenturret Distillery recently, only 1,740 bottles of the whisky were released.
