James Buchanan, 1st Baron Woolavington was a man who seemingly split his interests equally between race horses, philanthropy, and of course, whiskey.
Dead Men of Whiskey is a podcast about the remarkable lives and sometimes unusual deaths of the names we all know in whiskey. Head to to learn more.
Transcription:
Angel: Welcome to episode five of the dead men of whiskey I’m angel
Amy: And I’m Amy. And today we’re going to travel overseas, drink some whiskey and talk about a whiskey Baron James Buchanan, not the 15th president of the United States where they’re a Canadian born man with the same name.
Angel: Wait, Canada’s not, that’s not overseas.
Amy: That’s correct. We’ll get there. But first, what are we drinking today?
Angel: What are we drinking? So I have in front of me, the Buchanan’s deluxe blended scotch whiskey aged 12 years. It looks very different from all the bottles that, that we’ve been drinking and reviewing and talking about. It’s a, this kind of like short stout, I guess this is the only size that comes in, that was available when we bought it. But it’s green. It has this like super green, Emerald green kind of color.
Amy: Well, it’s the first scotch that we’ve we’ve covered is not the first scotch we’ve drank by any means, but the first scotch we’ve covered on this book.
Angel: That’s right. And the first non American
Amy: That’s right. We’re international.
Angel: International. International. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I haven’t even started drinking any of mine yet. I’m waiting for you to drink yours. You first solar.
Amy: I was trying to talk while I was doing
Angel: So more info about the Buchanan’s it’s an 80 proof blended scotch whiskey. You can pick up on notes of orange chocolate and honey and the, yeah, those are all great. The beginning blends are known for having like a lighter profile. I can see that. So Buchanan’s had a nickname back in the day and that was black and white because it had this very distinguished black and white label. And they actually eventually these two adorable terriers in their marketing, one was black.
Angel: The other one was white. It was great harmonious. And they’re actually pretty cute. If you want to check out, we have an image that will be posted on our Instagram or website for you to check out.
Amy: James Buchanan was born in 1849 in Rockville, Canada. That’s an Ontario, his parents Alexander and Catherine were Scottish immigrants.
Angel: And James spent most of his childhood in Northern Ireland where, because he was a sickly little boy. He was for the most part homeschooled and this childhood illness would affect them throughout most of his life. We were kind of stuck. We couldn’t exactly find out what the ailment or illness was, unfortunately, but
Amy: Fight that illness as a child, James began working as an office boy for a shipping agent in Glasgow. At the age of 14, he moved up in the shipping company to clerk and then moved to his brother’s grain company where he learned all about barley. And it wasn’t until he was around 30 years old. Did he even venture into the whiskey when he started working for the London based McKinley and company,
Angel: His time here at McKinley and company has been described as short and unsuccessful, but he learned the scotch business through, went through while he was there
Amy: After a short five years at McKinley’s James returned to Scotland and asked J and J Ainslie, a whiskey company for a partnership, they rejected his offer, but James was super determined and he soon returned to London
Angel: At the age of 35 James form, James Buchanan and company with the financial help of a glass gal, blender named William Lowery
Amy: Suicide to have a quote unquote love of the liquid, just like angel. And he may have gotten into the business at just the right time. Scott should become the leading spirit for the middle and upper classes due in part to the great French wine blight.
Angel: Huh? What a, you want to share with us? What the great French white wine. I was gonna say, white flight, the great white flight of the eighties. That’s right. They fled the cities. What was this great French wine blight? It’s really hard to say,
Amy: Besides being really hard to say it was a blight that was caused by an aphid that destroyed the vineyards and France, which obviously led to a shortage of wine and things that you would make grapes with. The aphid was brought to Europe from North America on vines that were being used for grafting. So while France was the hardest hit by this blade, it did affect other European countries. And it’s believed that the reason that this happened at this time was because of the invention of steam ships and those steam ships allowed for a faster journey across the ocean, which consequently allowed for more durable, past, such as the Flexeril
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