Haig (whisky)
brand of whisky
Haig () is a brand of Scotch whisky, produced by Diageo in Scotland. It was originally manufactured by John Haig & Co Ltd. since the early 1820s.
History
Andrew Stein was a local farmer in Clackmannan, who founded a distillery in the early 1720s in the Kennetpans in Clackmannan, Clackmannanshire, which became Scotland's largest distillery by 1733. It has been called the world's first commercial distillery. Stein had taken over some land and distilling operations from a local monastery. (Stein's distillery is now in ruins, and fund-raising was attempted in early 2015 in an effort to try to preserve its remnants.)
Robert Haig was a distiller in the early 1600s and a member of the Scottish Clan Haig family. His great-grandson Kane McKenzie Haig, who lived in the Kennetpans area, married Margaret Stein of the Stein family in 1751.
The heritage of the two families, who owned significant farming and whisky interests, led to the development of new distilleries throughout Scotland and Ireland. Many of the Scottish distilleries went into sequestion as a result of the Lowland Licensing Act 1788, which contributed to the growth of whisky production in Ireland in this period.
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This entry incorporates text from “Haig (whisky)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.