He made a point when he came in in the morning of walking straight through the tun room and the mash house… If it was a very good trip, he’d stand and chat to you if it wasn’t so good, he’d walk straight on through.’ ‘We always knew if Hugh had had a good trip or a bad trip. ‘Armando Giovinetti came over and bought a few cases, and stuck them in the boot of his car, but Hugh spent a lot of time in Italy,’ says Malcolm. Mitcalfe oversaw Glen Grant’s conquest of the Italian market, where it was distributed by the Giovinetti family.
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He came to the cooperage when I was working there, learning how to build a cask. ‘What I did like about him was that he came as the boss’s son-in-law, but he ended up spending the better part of a year at the plant, learning from the bottom up,’ recalls Malcolm. Hugh Mitcalfe joined Glen Grant in 1959 as export and marketing director he was the son-in-law of distillery owner Major Douglas Mackessack, having married his daughter Kirsteen. Italian visitors: Mitcalfe (centre left, dark glasses) with Douglas Mackessack (kilt) and representatives of Glen Grant’s Italian importers at Inverness Aerodrome in 1961 HUGH MITCALFE (1934-2019) Whisky writer Charlie MacLean added that Mitcalfe’s contribution to the history of Scotch malt whisky ‘must not be underestimated’ – particularly his work in Italy with Glen Grant, and then with Macallan. ‘Hugh was intimately involved in every stage of The Macallan’s transition from being a top-class malt for the blenders into a powerful brand in its own right, thereby laying the foundations for the global fame to come,’ said David Cox, previously a director of The Macallan Distillers Ltd, now retired. In the 1980s, Mitcalfe developed Macallan’s ‘Anniversary’ expressions, starting with a 25-year-old, and moving on to a 50-year-old and a 60-year-old, a bottle of which recently sold for more than £1m at auction.
‘I keep saying to people, when they say “you built The Macallan” no, my team built The Macallan, and Hugh was an important part of that team.’ ‘Hugh Mitcalfe was the marketing brain behind The Macallan,’ added Willie Phillips, Macallan MD from 1978 to 1996. ‘Through his endeavours, Glen Grant really made it in Italy… We were selling nearly half a million cases there in the 1970s.’ ‘He left an indelible mark on Glen Grant,’ said Dennis Malcolm OBE, Glen Grant master distiller. Mitcalfe, who died ‘peacefully’ on 2 January, spent nearly 20 years at Glen Grant – a time of huge success for the Rothes single malt, especially in Italy – before moving to Macallan and helping to transform it from a little-known Speyside distillery into perhaps the world’s most recognised malt whisky.
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