William Lawson Distillers

The eponymous William Lawson was born in Scotland in the 1850s, migrating to Ireland while still very young. He started working in the whisky trade there, becoming the export manager for E&J Burke, who registered the brand name Lawson’s Liqueur Whiskey in 1889.

Although Lawson had left the company in 1903, it retained the rights to produce Lawson’s whisky, moving its blending operations from Ireland to Liverpool in 1923. The brand was eventually sold to Clan Munro, the Scotch whisky subsidiary of Martini & Rossi, who came to an agreement with DCL to rename it William Lawson’s to prevent confusion with products produced by its own subsidiary, Peter Dawson. The Italian firm then replaced Clan Munro as its whisky division in 1972 with new company, William Lawson Distillers.

In the same year it also acquired what was then the relatively new Macduff distillery, built just ten years earlier. The 1970s was a boom period for single malt sales in Italy, so Martini & Rossi were keen to get a brand on the shelves there. Preferring the more Scottish sound of it, they chose to market Macduff malt as Glen Deveron, quickly pushing out a 5-year-old product, as was the preference of the Italian drinker at the time.

By the 1990s, the globally renowned rum producer, Bacardi Limited, were looking to diversify their portfolio and acquired Martini & Rossi in 1993. The continued to operate William Lawson Distillers until 1998, when the newly formed Diageo sold them the John Dewar & Sons brand and distilleries in a deal worth $1.9bn. Bacardi Limited promptly replaced William Lawson Distillers with John Dewar & Sons as its Scotch whisky operation, although it continues to market the William Lawson’s blend, and was still bottling some Glen Deveron branded whiskies in 2019 despite launching a new Macduff brand called The Deveron in 2014.