Spiller, Brian
Cardhu - The world of malt whisky

John Walker & Sons Ltd., ISBN 0-9511005-1-3 , GBP 3.90, First Published 1985, 80 Pages, 21,5 x 15 cm, Paperback

Cardhu began as an illicit still on a remote farm on the uplands above the River Spey. The farmer, John Cumming, founded the legal distillery in 1824. Under his son Lewis, its product gained a reputation as a top-class Highland malt whisky, at first locally, and then gradually throughout Scotland. There was never enough of it; Lewis was not interested in expanding output, merely in enhancing the quality of his whisky. His widow Elizabeth, the only woman distiller in Scotland in her time, tripled sales when she built a new distillery in 1885. After she sold the business to John Walker & Sons Ltd, Cardhu became the "heart whisky" of Johnnie Walker Red Label and Black Label.

Elizabeth's son John ran the distillery for Walker's until the 1920's. His son, Sir Ronald Cumming, made his mark as a vigorous and highly effective salesman of Scotch whisky long before he presided over a great international business as Chairman of John Walker and of The Distiller Company Ltd. 

Four generations of Cummings, and, many more generations of craft workers, created the Cardhu Tradition: an amalgam of inherited skill, unremitting vigilance in safeguarding the character of the whisky, and the cultivation of good environment.

That is the subject of this book.