Background
Williamson was born in Glasgow in 1910 to John Williamson, a gunner in France with the Royal Garrison Artillery who died in 1918, and Agnes Whyte, née Paton.
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Bessie Williamson
Edit Profileaccountant assistant distillery manager
Education
She attended the University of Glasgow from 1927, intending to become a teacher.
Career
She is credited as being instrumental in promoting single malt whisky, in particular Islay malts and Laphroaig, during the then-emerging United States trend for single malts. However she did not graduate until 1932. After graduating with an Master of Arts in 1932, Williamson accepted a summer job at Laphroaig distillery intending only to stay a few months.
She worked directly with then owner Ian Hunter, eventually taking on responsibility for United States distribution following Hunter"s stroke in 1938.
By the time of the Second World War she had become full time distillery manager. With operations mothballed during the war and government seeking to use the distillery for storage and training purposes, Williamson succeeded in preventing the theft of stock or damage to equipment that had occurred at other distilleries such as Old Bushmills Distillery in Dublin and could have hampered recovery of production in the postwar period.
Over 400 tonnes of ammunition were stored at the facility during the early years of her tenure. After production restarted following the war, Williamson continued to pursue the blending sales that had been the backbone of Laphroaig"s business model beforehand, but starting to guide the business elsewhere.
Upon Hunter"s death in 1954, Williamson inherited the controlling interest in the Laphroaig distillery on Islay, Hunter"s house Ardenistiel, and the island of Texa.
Williamson is credited with being among the first to anticipate the coming trend for single malt scotches and to position the Laphroaig product, and by extension other Islay malts, to the American market. Williamson was quoted on United Kingdom television in the 1960s saying "The secret of Islay whiskies is the peaty water and the peat.. there"s an increasing demand for the Islay whiskies. We can"t supply the demand that we have for our whiskies."
The Scotch Whisky Association named Williamson as its American spokesperson from 1961 to 1964 and she toured the United States representing Islay whisky to buyers and distributors.
In 1962 Williamson sold a third of her business shares to Seager Evans.
The balance of ownership was released in 1967 to Long John Distilleries. Williamson continued as managing director of the distillery until her retirement in 1972.
Long John International was acquired by Whitbread & Company in 1975 and sold to Allied Lyons, now Allied Domecq, in 1990. Fortune Brands then split up its business product lines in 2011, forming its spirits business into Beam Incorporated.
Beam was then purchased by Suntory in April 2014.
Williamson died at Gartnavel General Hospital in Glasgow on 26 May 1982.
