Welsh whisky – the Frongoch distillery
Welsh whisky – the Frongoch distillery
Alex Kraaijeveld
The story of Wales’ first commercial whisky distillery, or at least the first one for which solid evidence exists, appears to have started in Hyde Park, London, in 1887. One Sunday, Richard John Lloyd-Price of Rhiwlas and Robert Willis are said to have taken a walk there and the conversation turned to whisky. Why was there no whisky made in Wales, despite both ‘whisky’ and ‘Wales’ beginning with a ‘W’? Why wouldn’t Wales be able to produce as good a spirit as Scotland or Ireland? Whether the shared ‘W’ really was the inspiration for Welsh whisky is something we will probably never know for sure, but the fact is that things moved quickly. Water samples were taken from various places in Wales and a sample from the Tairvelyn Brook near Frongoch, at the edge of Snowdonia, proved most favourable. The Welsh Whisky Co. Ltd. was registered in 1889 with a capital of £100,000 (divided into 19,960 shares of £5 and 200 of £1) and the participation of a number of business men active in the whisky industry. Among them was Charles R. Haig, a distillers agent from London, A.W. Ridley of London’s Mile End distillery, H. Woodward of the Seel Street distillery in Liverpool, and F. Roberts of the Bristol distillery. The new distillery was built at Lloyd-Price’s Rhiwlas Estate near Bala, with stones being carted from Craig y Tyddyn by farmers from the Frongoch and Cefnddwygraig districts.
Management was entrusted to a Mr. Colville, a Scot said to have extensive distilling experience. Water was taken from the Tairvelyn Brook and the river Treweryn and a railway siding of the line between Bala and Blaneau Festinog was largely for distillery use.
Confidence was high from the onset. On the day of the opening of the distillery, Lloyd-Price boasted:
And
when Welsh 'white-eye' has got them both on the toast
and this still-born idea will not perish still-born
when fame sounds Welsh Whisky's praise loud on the horn
Welsh malt whisky flowed from the newly-commissioned copper pot stills and a cask of polished oak with silver hoops, full of some of the first Welsh Whisky, was presented to Queen
Barnard toured the United Kingdom just too early to be able to visit Frongoch and include a description of the distillery in his ‘opus magnus’, but the description in an article in the Liverpool Daily Courier in 1892 could just as well have been by his hand:
A noble building situated close to the Railway Station, and obvious therefore, as saying goes, to the meanest observer, although as yet the Directors of the Company have not considered it necessary to advertise its existence to the passing Railway traveller by painting any name or description upon its massive walls, erected as they are from the handsome and durable gray granite of the country.
The company must have had grand plans as they registered additional several brands in 1889/90: “Black Prince”, “Coracle”, “Men of Harlech”, “Maid of Llangollen”, “Saint David”, “Taffy”, “Welsh Rare Bit”, “Bells of Aberdovey”, “The Leek”. Whether these were all meant for whisky is unknown ….. It described its own whisky in the most colourful piece of Victorian whisky marketing I’ve ever read:
..... the most wonderful whisky that ever drove the skeleton from the feast, or painted landscapes in the brain of man. It is the mingled souls of peat and barley, washed white within the rivers of the Treweryn. In it you will find the sunshine and shadow that chased each other over the billowy fields, the breath of June, the carol of the lark, the dew of night, the wealth of summer, the autumn's rich content, all golden with imprisoned light. Drink it, and you will hear the voice of men and maidens singing the "Harvest Home" mingled with the laughter of children. Drink it, and you will feel within your blood the startled dawns, the dreamy tawny dusks of perfect days. Drink it, and within your soul will burn the bardic fire of the Cymri, and their law-abiding earnestness. For many years this liquid joy has been within staves of oak, longing to touch the lips of man, nor will its prototype from the Sherry Casks disdain the more dulcet labial entanglement with any New or Old Woman.
But the business didn't survive for very long. In 1900, the company was liquidated and the distillery sold; in 1903 the Welsh Whisky Co. Ltd. was wound up. What went wrong? The failure of the distillery is often blamed on a temperance movement active in
The whisky was not maturing properly; it remained rawish, crude and practically flavourless for a pure malt product and a market could not be found for it on its supposed merits at a profitable price. ….. The whisky lay in the distillery warehouses ‘eating its head off’ for want of customers, occasional lots of casks were sold off at a loss to get rid of accumulating stock, and ultimately the whole was disposed of at the auctioneer’s hammer in London at an average of something less than a half, or even one-third, the prime cost of production, expense of warehousing, and interest on current expenditure.
To date, virtually nothing is left of the Frongoch distillery. The buildings are all demolished and among the few remnants are some photographs, the key to the main doors, and three bottles, two of which full. One of these, owned by HRH the Prince of Wales and kept at the
The story of the Frongoch distillery has a final, unusual twist. The distillery buildings were used in the First World War, first to keep German prisoners of war and subsequently, after the 1916 Easter rising, for Irish prisoners. The prison complex consisted of two camps: South Camp, which was housed in the distillery buildings (the drawing is made by prisoner artist Cathal MacDowell), and North Camp, across the road from the distillery. The granaries were made into five dormitories and South Camp housed almost 1,000 men. The name ‘Frongoch’ caused amusement among the Irish prisoners as ‘frangach’ is the Irish word for ‘rat’. Among Frongoch’s most famous prisoners was one Michael Collins.
About a century after the last batch of Welsh whisky was distilled at Frongoch, a whisky still became active again on
I could not have written this article without the help of the
© 2002 Alex Kraaijeveld
