The Whisky Regions of Scotland

The story of this map

Ask anyone who drinks malt whisky where it comes from and they will draw you this map: Speyside crowded along the river between Elgin and Dufftown, the Highlands spread from Oban to the Dornoch Firth, Islay alone in the Atlantic with its peat smoke, Campbeltown at the tip of Kintyre, the Lowlands around Glasgow and Edinburgh, and the island distilleries scattered from Arran to Orkney. This sheet puts that map on the wall in the manner of the nineteenth-century county surveys: an engraved-style coastline with hatched shading, region tints in amber, rivers in blue, a compass rose, a scale bar in miles and a border of barley ears.

We drew it ourselves. Distillery maps are modern works and stay in copyright, and the Victorian county maps in the archives say nothing about whisky — so the studio made an original in the same spirit, dated and signed on the sheet so no one mistakes it for an antique.

The six regions are named with a few of their best-known distilleries, the whisky rivers are drawn — Spey, Tay, Clyde, Dee and Tweed — and the burghs are marked from Wick to Ayr, with Kirkwall in Orkney for Highland Park and Portree on Skye for Talisker. A legend along the foot repeats the whole list, which makes it the print people stand and read with a glass in hand.

It is printed to order on archival matte paper and framed in black, oak or white, and it pairs naturally with Mercator’s 1595 map of Scotland or Edgar’s plan of Edinburgh. A gift for the friend with a shelf of single malts, or for the one who has just bought their first bottle.

Before and after

Left: the archive scan exactly as published. Right: the file that goes to the printer.

Archive scanRestored

Restoration notes

Not a restoration: this sheet is our own drawing. Rendered from vector artwork at print resolution, so every size is sharp. The paper tone and mottling are drawn in, not scanned.

Every print carries its archive credit on the packing slip. Paper tone and small imperfections of the original are kept on purpose; nothing is redrawn.