For decades, Lochside distillery was arguably Montrose’s most visible landmark. Built originally as a brewery in Germanic Brauhaus style, it brewed Deuchar’s IPA for many years and also (no kidding) Newcastle Brown, shipped from Esk to the Tyne weekly in two special “beer boats”.
It was converted to a distillery in the mid-1950s by Joseph Hobbs, one of the industry’s great go-getters and characters. However, Lochside might never have been developed as a distillery had not Hobbs’s quest to revive the long-moribund Glenmavis distillery at Bathgate been frustrated.
Glenmavis was run for more than 50 of its 114 years by John MacNab, whose whisky was labelled MacNab’s Celebrated Glenmavis Dew. It closed in 1910 and four decades later Hobbs bought it and the MacNab name and planned a big grain distillery on the sloping site.
As grain distilleries work around the clock, they produce lots of spirit but also copious effluent. One plan was to pour it down the disused Balbardie Colliery across the road, but Balbardie was the escape route for an adjacent coalpit so the idea was quashed. Curiously, Hobbs even briefly looked at building a distillery at Arbroath and transporting the casks to warehouses in Bathgate, but that idea also bit the dust.
In the end he plumped for Lochside, converted some of the brewing plant into mashtuns and washbacks and installed a two-column Coffey or patent still to produce grain spirit. Over the years, Lochside also installed classic copper stills to make malt whisky and produced Lochside Single Malt and Sandy MacNab blended whisky — both now collector’s items fetching big money at auctions.
Over the decades Lochside passed from the Hobbs family through several hands— DYC of Spain, Seagram’s of Canada and Allied Distillers — and was closed in 1992 although it took years to dispose of all stocks. Local conservationists campaigned to get the Brauhaus tower listed and saved, but their efforts were in vain. Today the distillery site is a lacklustre block of flats, the warehouses area a supermarket. However, Charlie Sharpe, for many years the distillery manager, still lives nearby.
Joe Hobbs was a Canadian of British descent, a born entrepreneur with many business irons in the fire but with a passion for whisky. He also owned Ben Nevis Distillery at Fort William for many years and lived in nearby Inverlochy Castle. After his death his son converted it into one of Britain’s finest hotels and it is still a hotel today.
Glenmavis Distillery was never revived and the hillside site is today a private housing estate. With the march of time, the names of Hobbs and MacNab have faded from the scene — but their places in whisky history are assured.
