Long before David Beckham and Haig Club, there was Dimple Haig. Launched at the end of the 19th century, it became the deluxe, sophisticated brother to the standard Haig & Haig blend, while in the US it has long been known as Dimple Pinch.
Whether the name inspired the bottle or vice versa is unclear, but Dimple has always been packaged in a distinctive lozenge-shaped bottle with pinched sides like a collapsed pot still. Of the various expressions over time, the 15-year-old has a caramel sweetness, a touch of spice, some vanilla oak and no discernible smoke.
Dimple Haig, or Dimple Pinch, first came to market in 1893 at a time when demand for blended Scotch whisky was expanding in all directions. The Haig family and their network of cousins dominated the industrial Lowland whisky scene and were supremely well-placed to surf the boom.
John Haig & Co was a founding partner in the Distillers Company Ltd and became fully absorbed into DCL in 1919, though it operated as a more-or-less separate company.
It was two of John Haig’s sons – Alicius and Hugh Vietch – that established Haig & Haig in 1888 as an export business, overseeing the sale of the company’s whiskies in the US. The brothers’ work in the lead-up to Prohibition established the popularity of Dimple in the US.
By 1939 the combination of the Dimple and Gold Label brand extensions made Haig the top-selling Scotch in the UK, while Dimple Pinch had recovered its pre-Prohibition sales in the States.
The story of Haig Club goes back to 1627, when Robert Haig began distilling in Scotland, however it wasn’t until almost two centuries later that John Haig established the Cameronbridge distillery. A firm believer in progress, John Haig installed at the distillery what at the time was almost unheard-of technology: continuous column stills that set out his vision for quality blends through innovation, new technology and creativity. Cameronbridge became the first distillery to produce grain whisky using the column still method invented by John's cousin Robert Stein, laying the foundations for the growth and success of the modern Scotch Whisky industry. In 1865, John and eight other grain distillers formed an alliance, and in 1877 Distillers Company Limited (DCL) was formally established. Through time DCL evolved into Diageo, the world's largest spirits company.
Today, Cameronbridge is the largest grain distillery in Europe and Diageo’s only wholly-owned grain plant. Staying true to its 200 years of distilling tradition to sit at the very forefront of technical expertise and skill, the distillery takes a 21st Century approach to distilling. Cameronbridge recycles all the by-products from the distillation process (grain water and yeast) to produce enough power to run itself. Its custom-made stills run continuously 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
