marked by personal values. I never once heard him swear or curse, a remarkable feat in a distillery environment. All in all, he was a person I could look up to.
At the age of 15, I had successfully completed my schooling and was eager to start working in the distillery to finally earn my own money, and to provide for the family. That, along with my fascination with Bowmore distillery, was what drove me on. But to gain a foothold in the distillery, I first had to get a job. To do that, it was a case of overcoming my reluctance and asking to speak to Mr McColl which, in turn, meant having to knock on his door. I was small and rather shy at the time, stood in front of this massive door that clearly stated ‘Distillery Manager’ in big, dignified letters. It was six o’clock in the evening and having taken a deep breath beforehand, I knocked timidly. There are moments in life that become etched in the memory forever, and the moment when that door opened in slow motion in front of me was one such moment. “Oh, hello Jim, come on in.” I was greeted by the sonorous voice of Mr McColl. “Well, Mr McColl, I’ve just finished school and I was hoping to maybe have a job here, maybe as a barrel maker?” I asked, with my eyes lowered somewhat meekly. Seconds passed that felt like half an eternity, but he finally answered: “Let me think for a moment … Okay, I’ll give you a job, but you have three months’ probation before you can start an apprenticeship, so you’d better behave yourself. I don’t want to hear any complaints about you doing anything stupid, not even in the slightest! If you work hard and conscientiously, then it might, I say might, turn into a permanent job in the cooperage. Remember, no mischief!” You can scarcely imagine how those words resounded. On the one hand, there was the possibility of realising the dream right there on my doorstep, along with the clearly worded warning: no mischief! James McColl knew me well, but believe me, I was not in the mood for mischief. I’d show him that he could rely on me 100 per cent, determined to convince him that he hadn’t made a mistake.
The entrance to the Bowmore distillery.
“If you work hard and conscientiously, then it might, I say might, turn into a permanent job in the cooperage. Remember, no mischief!”
James McColl
And so, at 7 a.m., on August 1st 1963, I started work at Bowmore Distillery, the beginning of a new era for me. I had a rough idea of what was in store, for after all, in the last few years I had probably been in the distillery more often than at school. I’d even been sent home by Mr McColl himself on occasion. Nevertheless, everything would be different from now on. Working at Bowmore would no longer be a leisure activity, but my job, my livelihood. From now on, I’d be the one who earned the money. So there I was, a small 15-year-old lad, on the cusp of adulthood, with the manager’s admonishing words fresh in my ears. If everything worked out, an apprenticeship as a barrel maker was on the cards, so I did everything I was asked to do. I helped wherever my help was needed, whether loading and unloading, turning malt, shovelling coal or peat, or labelling barrels. I rolled countless barrels in the warehouse, just doing everything that had to be done and doing what I was told. Soon after starting, one of my main jobs was stowing the barrels in the warehouse, though I freely admit that it was certainly not my favourite of jobs. Stowing barrels was an extremely demanding, back-breaking job that could be quite dangerous to boot. If you’ve ever seen the inside of a distillery warehouse, you’ll have seen long rows of barrels, usually stacked three high. Between those barrels are long, bulky storage timbers that function like rails, placed precisely atop the barrels so that the construct could support itself. In order that the whisky could mature properly, those timbers were used to roll the casks into their resting positions.
Bowmore is one of the few distilleries still malting today – with peat smoke, as is customary on Islay.
Back then, when the casks came into the warehouse, they had bung stoppers made of cork. It was only when they left the distillery that those were replaced with tight-fitting oak stoppers. The sole reason for using a cork stopper was to allow opening of the cask (at least that was the official justification) to subject the contents to strict quality control or measure the fill level. Believe me, the distillery workers wished for the return of the cork stoppers when the oak stoppers were introduced. Internal ‘quality controls’ were much more difficult to carry out from then on. So if you wanted to roll a cask into position on the storage timbers for maturing over the next few years, you had to know exactly where the bung was positioned at the beginning, so that, after you had rolled it into place, it was exactly on top, that is at the 12 o’clock position. This positioning was a science in itself, necessitating a conscientious work ethic. It was a method that ensured not a single drop leaked out, always assuming the barrel was tight in the first place.
You quickly got the hang of it, but what made it a sheer challenge for me as a beginner, was the fact that all the barrels had to be manoeuvred by hand. Today, it’s not a problem, because there are forklifts for that, but in those days, we’d only muscle power on which to rely. It’s why this job was so unpopular. A hogshead holds 55 gallons, which is pretty much 250 litres of whisky. Together with the weight of the barrel, that’s more than 350 kilos, which, once rolling, was impossible to stop with your bare hands. You had to concentrate at all times and you couldn’t afford to make any mistakes. The risk of accidents was quite high, even if it didn’t seem that way at the time. With the safety regulations in place today, it would no longer be allowed, but this work was carried out in exactly the same way as generations had done for decades, or even centuries. But it was a matter of not disappointing Mr McColl and getting through my probationary period without any reprimands. Imagine how quickly a finger could have been lost, or how an out-of-control barrel could have crushed someone. It’s a situation that doesn’t bear thinking about! Thank God I still have all my fingers. During those first days and weeks I gained an insight into the harsh realities of working in a distillery, though I could probably have guessed at some of them before I started my apprenticeship. Today, I figure that this was Mr McColl’s intention when giving me those hard, elementary lessons; however, they only strengthened my resolve to be a cooper! So I hustled, did every job asked of me, worked really hard, never looked at the clock and took extra shifts whenever I got the chance.
The trial period almost flew by and I learned an enormous amount, but most importantly, I gave Mr McColl no reasons for complaint, and he was happy with my progress. It was a very special feeling when I proudly brought home my first hard-earned money, totalling five guineas (five pounds, five shillings and five pence), which was a lot of money for me at the time. My mother Peggy also worked near the distillery, regularly cleaning for Mr Learmouth, the only lawyer on Islay. He had an uncanny sense for those matters that affected people’s lives, listening carefully, able to assess situations quickly, before drawing his conclusions to steer matters in the right direction. My mother had told him I was about to start an apprenticeship as a cooper, but neither I nor my mother knew that this wasn’t actually possible under the law in force at the time. According to the Coopers’ Trade Union, an apprenticeship could only be approved if there were at least five trained coopers working in a plant. But there were only four working at Bowmore distillery, one short of allowing me to realise my dream.
One of the abovementioned four was my idol and was soon to become my teacher. His name was Davy Bell. Just the sound of that name filled me with pride and anticipation, because Davy was an icon in the industry. There was probably no better barrel maker in the world in those days, a man respected and revered throughout Scotland, and it was he who was to train me. I was so close to being able to start my apprenticeship with this living legend, to learn from the best of the best, that I could hardly believe my luck. But then I heard about this clause in the Scotland-wide collective agreement, and my world came crashing down around me. Mr McColl told me about the situation as gently as possible, holding out the prospect of another apprenticeship elsewhere in the distillery. That was some consolation, but only a small one. My dream was shattering before my eyes, but at least I could stay at the distillery on Islay. I was understandably
