White Horse was registered as a brand in 1890 by Peter Mackie, nephew of one of the original partners in Lagavulin distillery on Islay. The name was borrowed from the White Horse Inn on Edinburgh's Canongate, a posting house said to have been used by Jacobite sympathisers in the eighteenth century. Mackie, known as 'Restless Peter', proved a relentless marketeer and pushed the blend aggressively into export markets.
Lagavulin sits at the core of the blend, and even in the modern standard bottling a peaty thread remains audible beneath the grain. White Horse was one of the first Scotches to be sold with a screw cap rather than a cork stopper, a change introduced in 1926 that roughly doubled sales within six months. The brand passed through DCL and is today owned by Diageo.
It is not a complicated dram. The grain is clean, the malt component carries enough smoke to distinguish it from its rivals, and the finish is dry rather than cloying. As an everyday blend with genuine historical weight, it earns its shelf space.
