Berry Bros & Rudd

By 1810 George Berry's name was over the shop; his sons George Jr. and Henry took over in 1845, and it still bears the name of these original Berry Brothers.^1,10 The firm says its first own-label cask bottling was in 1853.¹¹ Heritage director Ronnie Cox told Club Oenologique the real change came in 1861, when the Single Bottle Act let wine and spirits merchants sell single bottles.¹⁰ Before then, he said, buying spirits was the domain of big houses and wealthy households that could afford to buy and store casks.¹⁰

In 1915 its export price list included a blend named St. James's.⁴ Its blends were pale, to suit Cognac-drinking partners who equated lightness with quality.⁴ Hugh Rudd, from a family of wine merchants in Norwich, joined Berry Bros. in 1920.^1,10 Ronnie Cox says the firm's whisky side started to take shape when Hugh Rudd arrived.^1,10 In 1923 Francis and Walter Berry and Hugh Rudd created Cutty Sark, a pale blended Scotch with no peated malt, for Prohibition-era America.^1,4,5 From 1936 Glasgow's Robertson & Baxter, which later became Edrington, was the sole supplier of whisky for the blend.^4,6 On 25 March 1943 the firm became a limited company and took the name Berry Bros. & Rudd Limited, since Hugh Rudd was by then essential to it.^1,12 In 1967 it moved its bottling and warehouse to purpose-built buildings in Basingstoke, Hampshire.²

Berry Bros distributed The Glenrothes for years before it bought the brand from Edrington in 2010.^2,7,13 In 1987 the firm began developing The Glenrothes single malt.⁶ The Spirits Business called its 1994 launch as a vintage malt radical, at a time when the Scotch industry was wedded to absolute consistency.^3,6,7 In 2010 it sold Cutty Sark to Edrington, which had supplied whisky for the blend for over 70 years.^2,4,13 In return it bought The Glenrothes brand, while Edrington kept the distillery.

By 2018, after Keith Greggor sold his shares, it held a majority stake in Hotaling & Co., the renamed Anchor Distilling, owned jointly with Tony Foglio.^6,14,17 In 2023 its chief executive, Emma Fox, joined the board of the Cotswolds Distillery when the firm bought a minority stake.^2,8,9