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George S Grant (1923-2002) was chairman of Glenfarclas Distillery in Speyside for fifty-two years. His ancestor, John Grant, had purchased the distillery back in 1865 and it has remained in the Grant family ever since. George's son, John LS Grant, is the current chairman. In this audio extract, originally recorded for 'Moray Firth People' in 1983, George talks to Sam Marshall about the Pattison Crash of 1898-99.

Interviewer: You mentioned the Pattison Crash, what was that?

It was a firm in Leith run by Pattison Brothers who overextended themselves in the whisky business. They were sitting on huge stocks which was held on the bank overdraft. In those days Bills of Exchange which you very seldom see today - in fact, we haven't seem them for a long time - and what brought them to a sticky end was a bank refused to honour a bill. And of course it was like pulling the key card out of a house of cards - the rest just collapsed on them. That knocked the bottom out the whisky market for aged whiskies and of course they couldn't sell the stock.

Interviewer: How long did it take the industry to recover after that one?

Well, that's a difficult one to answer because they were only getting over it when Lloyd George brought in his budget to kill the trade. Then you had the First World War and that brought in aging whisky. Up until then they could drink it straight from the still, but Lloyd George again decided they had to age it for three years in order to cut down drunkenness amongst the troops etc, which of course is why we had the Invergordon state of affairs that you know about, and Carlisle.

Interviewer: What happened in Carlisle?

Well, they had a munitions factory somewhere about Carlisle and it was the same set of affairs. They turned Carlisle and Invergordon into states - public houses - I've forgotten the name of it, off hand. But all the licences belonged to the state and it's only within the last ten or fifteen years that they changed the law for these two parts