The Whisky Algorithm: David Thomson of Annandale Distillery

Cask to Glass · Apr 23, 2026 · 44m

If you want to get David Thomson, co-founder of Annandale Distillery, started, just tell him, “You don’t make peated whisky in the south of Scotland.”

“Yes, we do!” he’ll thunder.

Then expect a wee history lesson.

“If you go to Barnard’s book, The Whisky Distilleries of the United Kingdom,” he’ll tell you, referring to Alfred Barnard’s definitive whisky guide published in 1887, “you find that all four of the distilleries that were in the south of Scotland did make peated whisky.”

“I mean,” David says of Annandale, “we live in a bog frankly, so why wouldn’t we make peated whisky? But you know…