Background
Walker was born near Kilmarnock in Ayrshire, Scotland. When his father Alexander died in 1820 he was left £417 in trust.
Walker was born near Kilmarnock in Ayrshire, Scotland. When his father Alexander died in 1820 he was left £417 in trust.
In 1820 the trustees invested in an Italian warehouse, grocery, and wine and spirits shop on the High Street in Kilmarnock. In 1833 John married Elizabeth Purves. He was a respected businessman, leader of the local trade association, and a Freemason.
His store"s stock was almost entirely destroyed in an 1852 flood, but the business recovered within a couple of years.
His own whisky brand, then known as "Walker"s Kilmarnock Whisky" was popular locally, although John Walker himself was a teetotaler. John"s son Alexander Walker (named after John"s father) had apprenticed with a tea merchant in Glasgow, and there learned the art of blending tea.
As one writer put it: A disastrous flood in Kilmarnock in 1852 had destroyed all of Walker"s stock, and when Alexander joined the business in 1856, he persuaded his father to abandon the narrow realm of the grocery trade and to go into wholesale trading. At the beginning, the firm offered a range of spirits: Campbeltown whisky from the Kintyre Peninsula.
Whisky from the Inner Hebridean Island of Islay, with its pungent smoky flavor.
Patent still, or grain, whisky. And "Glenlivat" (sic), Speyside whisky.
