They stirred the mush tun, stoked the fires beneath the still, dodged the taxman and poured the powerful amber liquor. 

In farmhouse distilleries disguised bakeries and at illicit Highland stills, generations of women helped lay down the foundations of today’s global whisky industry. 

When the Excise Act transformed distilling, men took over and whisky became regarded as a man’s drink, sipped by a roaring open fire while plonked in a button-backed leather armchair after an evening putting the world to rights, or slugged from a hipflask at the rugby.

Now, however, a rising number of women are rewinding the clock and taking key roles within the modern whisky industry – from keeping alive the specialist skills required to produce world-famous malts and blends, to running distilleries and raising the profile of Scotland’s national drink. 

At Skye’s oldest working distillery, Talisker, the pristine whitewashed walls gleam against the rugged backdrop of the snow-tipped Cuillins, and are reflected in the still water of Loch Harport. 

It’s an image many might conjure up when they think of a Scottish distillery – remote, weather-beaten and steeped in tradition. 

Yet behind the scenes it is a trio of women who are its helm. 

Diane Farrell, senior site manager, oversees the working of the distillery, colleague Fiona Macintyre, brand home manager, takes charge of the visitors’ centre and site operations manager Jackie Robertson looks after “grain to glass” production at an operation which runs 24 hours, seven days a week. 

Farrell, who earned a first with distinction Masters in chemical engineering at Strathclyde University, says: “It’s very rare to have an all-female team in the malt distillery industry so I’m extremely proud of the fact that I’ve got an all-female management team.

“I love the fact that times are changing.”

At the distillery visitors’ centre, Macintyre and her team deal with as many as 90,000 visitors every year.  “We are the only attraction on Skye that has a roof,” she laughs. 

“It’s not just men that are running the industry, females are involved and there are now more and more women in the whisky industry.”

Indeed, not only is whisky growing in popularity among women drinkers – nearly one-third of UK whisky drinkers are women, a trend replicated in other countries – there is an increasing female presence throughout the whisky sector. 

Women are now found in every kind of role, from the top of the industry – such as Karen Betts, appointed as CEO of the Scotch Whisky Association in May 2017 after a 16-year career in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to Diageo’s first new female coopering apprentices, Angela Cochrane and Kirsty Olychick. 

The pair has just joined a team of 16 apprentices at Diageo’s Cambus cooperage in Clackmannanshire, where the four-year apprenticeship includes theoretical and hands-on experience in the tradition of building casks.

Angela, a former psychiatric nurse, spotted the apprenticeship on social media. “I thought it sounded like a really interesting career option, so I knew I had to go for it,” she said.  

“It’s a lot more complex than I thought. I’m knackered when I get in at night but everything from handling the barrels to swinging the hammer is already starting to feel a lot more natural.”

Fellow apprentice Kirsty Olychick left Canada to join the cooperage apprenticeship. “I’ve always been inspired by the Scotch industry,” she says. 

“I like the fact that you learn the skill by hand – you get the satisfaction of seeing the job done rather than reading about it in a book.

“It’s such an exciting prospect to think that I’ll be contributing to the next generation of Scotch. You shouldn’t let anything hold you back.”

Drinks giant Diageo says it has women employed in every part of its business in Scotland. Last year Rebecca Weir became the first female apprentice at its Abercrombie Coppersmiths, while women hold posts from senior management through to distillery managers, engineers, master blenders and, now, in traditional crafts of coopering and coppersmith. 

Elsewhere, Stephanie Macleod of John Dewar and Sons and Rachel Barrie at Morrison Bowmore are among the few females to have broken into the role of master blenders.

In many ways they are following in well-trod footsteps. Cardhu distillery was launched by Helen Cumming and her husband in the 1820s. Believed to be Scotland’s first female distillery owner she was said in Alfred Barnard’s Whisky Distilleries of the United Kingdom, to possess “the courage and energy of a man, and in devices and plans to evade the gaugers, no man nor woman could equal her.”

Cardhu was sold in 1893 to Johnnie Walker & Sons, where these days almost half of the 12-strong blending team are female. 

Meanwhile, on a smaller scale, Heather Nelson, a film and TV production company co-owner, has launched Toulvaddie micro-distillery at a former airfield near Tain, in Easter Ross.

The first bottles are due in a decade, and it’s hoped the two copper stills will produce 30,000 litres a year. 

Karen Betts, CEO of the Scotch Whisky Association, said: “Many things that used to be associated solely with men – working in the City, being a bus driver, a doctor, a postman, a CEO – have changed. And so too the Scotch whisky industry is changing. 

Not only are more women enjoying whisky more than ever, today making up a third of whisky drinkers in the UK, but the people who craft Scotch whisky in communities across Scotland are changing too.”

Yet while the industry sheds its macho image, the idea that women might – like their ancestors – take the helm of its production is still in its infancy for some. 
At Talisker, Farrell recalls a particularly sweet moment.

“I was in my driveway and one of my neighbours was walking past.

“He said, ‘does your man work at the distillery?’ I said ‘No, I run the distillery, I’m the manager there’,” she recalls. “It was one of the best moments of my life.”