Preparing a successor in a family business usually begins with one important question: “Which of the children should take over the business?” But look at the history of one of the few independent whisky distilleries left, and a different issue emerges. This family business asked another, more important question: “Regardless of who succeeds, where and when should the successor’s experience take shape?”
Speyside, in the Scottish Highlands, is home to more than fifty whisky distilleries. Many of them now belong to large international companies such as Diageo and Pernod Ricard, both listed on the stock exchange. But among the green fields beside Ben Rinnes, one distillery is still run the way earlier generations did: one family owns it, with no outside shareholders and no parent company.
The company is called Glenfarclas, and the Grant family has run it for more than a century and a half. What makes this family interesting is something that has passed from one generation to the next without ever being written down. Before taking their seat at the family business, Glenfarclas successors went through a remarkable kind of training, one that looks more like a fairly risky adventure. Sometimes they chose this training; sometimes they learned from a bitter failure. More striking still, each time their industry fell into a downturn, they did not narrow their horizons; they took bolder and sometimes stranger steps. In this «Genar» article, we look at Glenfarclas, the Grant family and the path they chose.
The main source for the history in this article is Glenfarclas: An Independent Distillery by Ian Buxton, a historian of the whisky industry who wrote the book to record the family’s and the distillery’s history.
The First and Second Generations: No Time to Prepare
John Grant (1805–1889) was a cattle breeder whose only contact with whisky was drinking it. In 1865, he bought Rechlerich farm, together with the distillery beside it, licensed since 1836 by the previous tenant, Robert Hay, for £511 and 19 shillings, a large sum at the time, equal to 2,560 days’ wages for a skilled worker. Even so, he had nothing to do with making whisky. He focused on cattle breeding and, for extra income, leased the distillery to a local man who knew the distilling trade. That man was John Smith, who later founded the Cragganmore distillery. The choice was no accident: Smith had previously managed the Macallan, Glenlivet and Clydesdale (in Wishaw) distilleries and was an experienced distiller. According to the family, he was also a distant relative of John Grant.
In 1870, Smith built his own distillery and parted ways with the Grants. In his place, John Grant brought in his son George, who had married Elsie Gordon that same year. George had five children, including two sons named John and George, names that recur in later generations and make the family tree somewhat hard for today’s reader to follow.
George Grant (1830–1890) inherited the farm and distillery in 1889, but died just a year later. His widow, Elsie, inherited the business and the farm and handed its management to her two eldest sons. No one had much time to prepare.
The Third Generation: From a Major Failure to an Established Tradition
In the late 1890s, John (1873–1949) and George (1874–1949) sold half the company to Pattisons of Leith to finance expansion. The Pattison brothers were originally dairy merchants in Edinburgh who saw a big opportunity in the growing whisky industry. They founded their joint company with the Grants in 1896 and, with expensive advertising and big promises, attracted substantial capital from investors. The Pattison brothers became the industry’s stars, but the empire they built was nothing more than a large-scale fraud. The brothers went to prison, and their company went bankrupt. Their collapse set off a chain-reaction downturn across the entire Scotch whisky industry.
The downturn forced the Grant brothers to save the business by selling part of their whisky stock at a very low price and to cover the remaining losses with a loan from the Caledonian Bank, secured against the farm and its stocks. The family repaid the entire debt within eight years.
The experience cost the family dearly, financially and psychologically. However, it also taught a lasting lesson: the family would never again so easily share full ownership of its business with anyone outside the family.
The Fourth Generation: A Collection Born of a Threat
George, the third-generation George’s son, remained chairman for 52 years, until he died in 2002. He turned one of the company’s greatest threats into an even greater opportunity. In 1968, the Distillers Company (later part of Diageo) sent him a letter stating that it intended to stop using Glenfarclas output in its blends the following year. Although the threat was never fully carried out and purchases continued the next year, it prompted George to make a decision that set Glenfarclas on a different path. George did not want his company to depend so heavily on one large customer, so he set aside a larger share of production to bottle and sell directly.
Years later, this decision became a collection of 43 consecutive vintages from 1952 to 1994. In this business, a “vintage” means the contents of a specific cask from a specific year of distillation, not a blend of several casks like most whiskies on the market. Having a sound vintage from every consecutive year means an unbroken chain, with no gap in the stock.
Rather than selling it to the market, the family deliberately set this stock aside to bottle and release one day. In 2007, the plan came to fruition: the 43 vintages were released under a single name, the Family Casks collection. Each bottle came from a specific, individually numbered cask, at natural cask strength and without dilution. As a result, each vintage had a very limited run.
Almost no other distillery in Scotland could have repeated this, because few distilleries, especially after the 1980s downturn, held such an unbroken stock. Glenfarclas could release all 43 years only because, in earlier years, it gradually set aside some of its output without knowing it would one day form such a collection.
Over time, some years (such as 1979) were re-released several times in new editions, and by 2017 the collection had passed 380 bottlings. Its market value has also become clear: a complete set of 43 bottles was estimated at £140,000 to £180,000 at a Bonhams auction. What began in the 1960s as a defensive reaction became, six decades later, one of the most valuable Scotch whisky collections in history.
The Fifth and Sixth Generations: “Better to Make Your Mistakes Somewhere Else”
Before joining the family business, the son of the fourth-generation George worked for three years at a rival company, Teacher’s. Teacher’s was one of the best-known Scotch blended whisky brands, a business where, unlike Glenfarclas, bottle sales and branding had been central from the start rather than a side activity alongside bulk sales to blenders.
In keeping with family tradition, this son was also named John. When the fifth-generation John returned, he asked his father what he should do next. His father asked him where Teacher’s made its money, and John replied that it came from selling bottles of Teacher’s. That conversation sparked the shift of the 1970s: a greater focus on bottle sales instead of relying solely on bulk sales.
The conversation did not happen in a vacuum. A few years earlier, his father, George, had risked losing one of the family’s most important contracts with a large customer, the same threat reflected in the Distillers Company’s 1968 letter. When John returned from Teacher’s, his father had concluded that the company could no longer rely on bulk sales alone. John’s sales experience turned that defensive, emergency decision into a clear career path. He spent the next few years in sales and, in 1979, at 28, became managing director. From then on, Glenfarclas began building a network of independent importers and distributors in different countries, an approach it still uses today.
Seeing Opportunity in the Middle of a Downturn
In the 1980s, the whisky industry went through another downturn. While many distilleries closed, Glenfarclas also reduced output, but it kept producing and laying down stock. When the downturn ended, its aged stock was ready: the same 1968 pattern, repeated in another generation. For his son George, John turned his own experience into a clear principle, one George calls an “unwritten rule”: “Better to make your mistakes somewhere else.”
George’s path shows that this was more than a slogan:
An apprenticeship at Muntons, a malting company, before setting foot in any distillery.
A year at Inver House and, in all, work at four different distilleries, from mashing and distilling to warehouse work.
A period in Bordeaux, learning about wine.
Two years in sales in Hong Kong, mainly wine, vodka and gin, not his own family’s whisky.
A return to Glenfarclas in 2000 and a seat on the board in 2013, after global sales grew by more than 75 percent over four years.
This path was no accident. Before he was ever expected to make decisions about the family business, George had to practice decision-making elsewhere, make his mistakes there and measure himself against a standard other than his family’s. More importantly, he gained this experience outside the family business while Asia was in the grip of a financial crisis, not during a calm, predictable period. Today, Glenfarclas exports to more than 100 countries.
One Pattern, Many Behaviors
In 2025, another severe downturn awaited the whisky industry worldwide; yet once again, Glenfarclas took a different path and secured permission to build six new warehouses. Its distillery manager, Callum Fraser, said of the decision: “It may seem strange to be building more warehouses.” The family spends about £3 million a year on casks alone; with this investment, it is not limiting its horizon to next season but looking decades ahead.
In the Grants’ history, the same logic has repeated several times. When dependence on one customer became a threat, they built a whisky collection. When the market moved into a downturn, they saw future capacity. And when the next generation was due to take over the business, they sent it out of the house. These decisions follow a single pattern and lead to important, complementary results: the family not only tried to preserve its assets; it also tried to build the next generation’s capacity to make decisions.
In 1980, the same logic showed up in another form. Glenfarclas tried heating one of its stills with steam coils, a cheaper method than direct firing. But according to John Grant, the spirit changed completely: “All the character had gone, and it was very bland.” After about a week, they stopped the trial, and the distillery returned to the more expensive direct firing it still uses today.
Preparing a Successor Is More Than Naming an Heir
Had George joined Glenfarclas directly, he would have been an heir from day one. But his path through Muntons, four distilleries, Bordeaux and Hong Kong gave him something else: experience gained before authority.
Stewardship theory relates to this discussion from another angle. In 1997, Davis, Schoorman and Donaldson showed that, contrary to the prevailing view of the manager as a purely self-interested individual, people under the right conditions can see themselves not merely as owners of personal gain but as stewards of a larger purpose. More recent research has examined the role of outside experience more directly. A study by Kustec, Østergaard, and Sasson (2025 version) shows that successors with outside work experience perform roughly on par with professional, non-family CEOs after succession, while successors who grew up only inside the firm show no improvement in performance. Ge and Campopiano (2022), in a review of research on knowledge management in succession, also emphasize the importance of building and transferring the knowledge needed to lead a family firm successfully.
The family has never said that George’s outside experience was designed specifically to avoid repeating earlier generations’ mistakes; that is our reading. Dig a little deeper, though, and an interesting conclusion emerges: if a successor’s first serious mistake happens inside the family business, the successor does not pay the cost alone; it may fall on the family, the employees, the capital and even control of ownership. If part of that learning takes place elsewhere, the family can still benefit from the result without the mistakes directly affecting its financial legacy.
Day-to-day production management today rests with Callum Fraser, a specialist from outside the Grant family who was hired in 2012 and named Master Distiller/Master Blender of the Year at the Icons of Whisky Scotland awards in 2026.
This points to something interesting about Glenfarclas: the family’s financial independence does not mean complete managerial exclusivity. The family keeps ownership and strategic direction and brings in operational expertise from outside, the same distinction that Genar’s article «Is Your Wealth Really Yours?» explores: how you can own something without being the only one who decides about it.
What We Still Do Not Know
We know nothing about the fourth generation’s path before he took charge. The company’s official financial statements are not publicly available; the £3 million figure is only annual cask spending, not total revenue.
Nothing is certain about the seventh generation either. George has two daughters. We do not know whether the “work outside” rule will apply to the next generation or whether someone from that generation will join the business directly.
A Lesson for Facing a Downturn
The Grants’ pattern follows a clear rule: in a downturn or under threat, buy the resources competitors let go of.
In 1968 and in the 1980s, when many players in the industry faced a serious threat and scaled back, Glenfarclas saw the opportunity and did not stop producing or laying down stock. In a downturn, the opportunity does not always lie in an asset becoming cheaper; sometimes it lies in fewer people still being willing to spend on the future.
This is the question any business facing high inflation and political uncertainty can ask today: in this downturn, which resource (property, equipment, skilled staff, even a rival brand leaving the field) is available below its real value because of other people’s fear?
The second point, however, is more practical: bring your successor into the field during this very period of uncertainty, not after it. George Grant was not sent to Hong Kong and Bordeaux during a period of stability; he went to Hong Kong while a financial crisis gripped Asia. Experience gained under constraint is not the same as experience built in stable conditions.
Three Actions for Today
Under current conditions, as a business owner, you can take a few essential steps:
Make a list of the resources weaker competitors are abandoning in this downturn; you do not need to buy them right away, but you do need to recognize the opportunity.
If you have a successor in preparation, turn this downturn into their training ground rather than an excuse to postpone it. Give them a real decision, with a limited budget and in uncertain conditions, whose outcome (profit or loss) is theirs.
Make one expense this year that would otherwise be justified “next season,” precisely when everyone else is waiting for conditions to change.
By taking these actions, you will arrive at the same question the Grant family pursued over several generations: “If you expect your successor to make their first serious mistake this year, where would you rather it happen? Inside your business, or somewhere the cost of that mistake falls on them, while the family gains only the result and the lesson at no cost?”
A Mental Exercise: Where Should the Next Generation Gain Experience?
Take a pen and paper, not to find the right answer, but only to sharpen the questions:
If your successor joined the business tomorrow and made a major mistake, what would that mistake cost the family?
Which skill can you not teach them inside your own business?
Where could they practice that skill with real responsibility, somewhere their mistakes would cost the family less?
Under today’s uncertainty, which experience have you postponed with the excuse that “now is not the right time”?
If the next generation is not meant to be owners only, what must they experience before receiving authority to become successors?
Conclusion
The Grants did not preserve their business’s independence simply by holding on to its ownership. They built part of that independence through decisions that might not have seemed sensible in the short term: stock they did not yet need, investment during a market pullback, and sending the next generation into environments where their family name could not stand in for experience.
They did not take risk out of the house to stay safe; they accepted it elsewhere, at a lower cost, so the new generation would be ready when they returned home. Experience gained through real responsibility is exactly what the article «The Mind Builds Wealth, Not Money» Alone describes as “financial mental architecture”: a child who is never allowed to make mistakes has never practiced making decisions.