Glenlivet

George Smith had been distilling illegally in Glenlivet before the Excise Act made a licence possible. He took the first one in the parish, in 1824. A second distillery at Delnabo ran for about a decade and was given up, the original burned down in 1858, and in 1859 he built the distillery that still stands near Ballindalloch.

What he made was different from his neighbours: a lighter, fruitier spirit than the regional norm, and it has stayed that way. Andrew Usher, who had been selling it in London since the 1840s, put its name to Old Vatted Glenlivet, which the Oxford Companion calls the first branded Scotch whisky there had ever been.

The name became worth more than the whisky. Distilleries miles from the glen began attaching it to their own, and in 1884 the dispute ended in a settlement: they could hyphenate it behind their own name, but only this distillery's whisky could be called The Glenlivet. The definite article has been the mark of it ever since.