OVER half a century ago, Douglas Campbell started work at Tomatin Distillery.
Fifty years on, though now semi-retired, he still works for the distillery, except these days, instead of doing the job on his own doorstep — he and wife Liz still live in a distillery house as they have since 1975 — he has an ambassadorial role for the brand that has taken him from Japan to California.
The Campbells have a long standing link to the 114-year old distillery. Douglas’s father worked there as a cooper, while Douglas’s own son Colin works on the warehousing side. Daughter Linda, however, has opted for a career in teaching and at just 10 months old it is a little early to say if grandson Jacob wants to represent the Campbell’s fourth generation at Tomatin.
Douglas joined the Tomatin workforce on 3rd April 1961, leaving Inverness High School on Friday and starting work at Tomatin on Monday, aged just 15.
Starting as a boy clerk, his career was to take him through all aspects of the distillery’s work, eventually leading him to master distiller and distillery manager.
For that he thanked the late Jock McDonald, the son of Tomatin’s managing director and later managing director in his own right, but better remembered by Highland football fans as the last chairman of Inverness Thistle and the first chairman of its successor Inverness Caledonian Thistle.
"Jock took me under his wing and gave me more interesting things to do," said 65-year-old Douglas. "I’ve more or less worked in all the parts of the distillery."
This has taken him from cleaning out the mash tubs to the distillery boardroom, despite starting his career long before he was legally able to drink Tomatin’s product.
Normally this would not have been an issue, but not when Jock left him in charge of "dramming" his fellow distillery workers.
"Back then we had dramming days. All the guys got drams and if you did a particularly dirty job you got extra," Douglas explained,
"Jock had gone off to a football do. I was only 17 or 18, but he told me I had to dram them, I dreaded it! I was hardly old enough to drink myself and I was responsible for handing out drink to everyone else.
"It wasn’t always the best of stuff either, it was pretty raw spirit, but in those days some of the older guys looked at any way they could of getting a dram out of the distillery — legally or illegally — but
the young guys today aren’t really interested.
"Health and safety rules now. One man doesn’t work on his own any more. I used to work 12 hour shifts and for a lot of that you might be the only one in the place. You can’t do that any more."
It was what at first looked like the possible end of the distillery that proved to be Douglas’s biggest opportunity.
In 1984 Tomatin Distillery went into liquidation and with staff laid off and those remaining working only on a part-time basis, Douglas did put serious thought into leaving and finding new work elsewhere.
However, in 1986 Japanese company Takara Shuzo took over Tomatin, giving the business a chance to carry on to renewed success.
"After that, there was an opportunity for me to move onto the brewing side and then the management side," Douglas explained.
"After we went into liquidation, it was nearly two years before we ended up with the Japanese. By then our customer base was down to the bottom because we weren’t making whisky. Fortunately Jock McDonald stayed on to keep the place ticking over and he knew the industry inside out."
The Japanese owners were happy not to interfere in the running of the distillery, but their marketing might has been of enormous benefit in their home country, Japan now forming Tomatin’s second biggest market, beaten only by the USA. In his new ambassadorial role, Douglas has become a regular visitor to Japan, though he admits his first trip in 1991 was a big culture shock.
For Douglas, the biggest challenge was the food, for someone not particularly keen on fish, the home of sushi is not the best place to find a meal.
"When I went out first, I used to take Mars Bars and Cuppasoups in my luggage so I could have something to eat," he admitted.
Eating in the US is a bit easier and he has visited Chicago, New York and the eastern seaboard and, more recently, California.
"That’s the good side of the job, though I’ve only done it since I retired as distillery manager," he said.
"I only retired because I negotiated this. You can’t sit at home and do nothing.
"I’ve always wanted to travel. This was an opportunity to do that, but if you’d asked me about it even 10 years ago, it’s something I would never have thought about.
"Usually there’s a programme set out for me. I do whisky seminars and lay out a table with our brands and give a talk and the audience fire questions at you. These guys do know more about whisky than you realise and they go round all these events like Whisky Live looking for something new. They probably know more than I do because they know about other distilleries too."
Closer to home, Douglas has also taken trips to Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland and Sweden — anywhere the marketing department feel he might be usefully deployed in getting his message across to the industry and to the enthusiasts who know just as much about the usige beatha.
"These are the guys who spread the word for you and that’s we way we have got to do things because we haven’t got a massive marketing budget," Douglas added.
The strategy is paying off and the distillery sells 2.5 million litres of whisky a year, though Douglas points out that in the past it used to make as much as 13 million litres each year. However, in those days it all went into blended whisky, meaning that few people knew of Tomatin.
The difference today, post-liquidation, is that Tomatin now concentrates on producing its own malts.
"If you have a blended bottled, there are 30 different kinds of whisky in it. With malted it’s just one and that becomes the story," Douglas said.
"Tomatin is a very palatable, easy drinking whisky. The water comes off the Monadhliath Mountains and runs over the peat so the water is soft and can be a bit brown."
Tomatin no longer has its own maltings and has bought in malted barley for over 40 years. However, despite the views of other distilleries, Douglas does not believe this has a great impact on the whisky’s flavour. More important, he believes, are the water and the stills — each distillery uses its own unique design — while the greatest changes take place as part of the maturing process.
However, outside his work duties, Douglas is no whisky geek.
Only very occasionally will he have a glass at home, preferring wine or beer, though if he gets a spare moment at a whisky fair, he will try and sample some of the opposition.
However, his expertise when it comes to Tomatin’s own produce has been pressed into service to produce a special whisky marking his own length of service at the distillery.
Called Decades, it is a blend of five whiskies each drawn from a decade of Douglas’s service at Tomatin — 1967, 1976, 1984, 1990 and 2005.
Produced in a limited run of 9000 bottles, what Douglas regards as a nice tribute to his time at Tomatin is also regarded by connoisseurs as a very nice whisky and is selling well since its release in June.
Perhaps well enough to merit a sequel?
"I’m on my next decade now," he pointed out with a smile, "but I don’t think I’ll do another one."
