The name of Crabbie’s has remained famous throughout its long history in the Scottish drinks trade but latterly only for the company’s peerless Green Ginger Wine, an essential ingredient in the Whisky Mac cocktail, and more recently for a successful alcoholic ginger beer.

This was not always the case.  The Crabbie company can trace its roots back to 1801, when Millar Crabbie first established an upholstering company in Edinburgh. Millar Crabbie soon switched to grocery and from there to import and export of spices, blending and distribution of cordials and eventually, under the control of Millar’s son, John Crabbie, blending whisky.

The company flourished and by the middle of the 19th century had acquired extensive warehousing and bonded premises in Leith and the Haddington distillery in East Lothian which produced grain spirit for the company’s products until the middle of the 1860s.  Subsequently, in the 1880s, Crabbie was involved in the foundation of the North British grain distillery alongside Andrew Usher and WIlliam Sanderson, and became the first chairman of the board.

The Crabbie company continued producing blended whiskies throughout the 20th century but its fortunes dwindled following its acquisition by Diageo forerunner Distillers Company Limited in the 1960s. Production of the company’s own brand whiskies ceased in the 1970s and the Crabbie’s brand was sold in the 1980s to MacDonald and Muir, owners of the Highland Queen blend and Glenmorangie distillery.  

Halewood International acquired Crabbie’s in 2007 and set about reviving the brand, first with the previously-mentioned Crabbie's Alcoholic Ginger Beer, and subsequently with the opening of the Bonnington distillery, which returned whisky-making to the Leith district of Edinburgh for the first time in almost a century when distillation commenced in March 2020.

While they wait for the spirit from Bonnington to mature (the distillery’s inaugural whisky release was launched in 2023) Crabbie’s also have a flourishing indie bottling operation, with highlights including undisclosed ‘mystery’ long-aged single malts bottled under the Crabbie brand from the likes of Macallan, Glenlivet and Highland Park.