Sir Peter Mackie, 1st Baronet


Sir Peter Jeffrey Mackie, 1st Baronet was a Scottish whisky distiller and writer.
Mackie was born at St Ninians, Stirling. His father, Alexander Mackie, was a distiller. His mother was Jane Simpson Brown.
He was educated at Stirling High School and in 1878 joined his uncle's firm, James L. Mackie & Co, at the Lagavulin distillery on Islay. In the mid-1880s, he became a founding partner in Mackie & Co, which was established to market Lagavulin and other whiskies in London. In 1890, the two businesses amalgamated as Mackie & Co and began to blend White Horse. In 1895, Mackie's became a limited company and Peter Mackie became chairman, a post he held until his death. In 1924, the firm was renamed White Horse Distillers Ltd and became a public company.
Mackie travelled and wrote extensively on politics, especially on tariff reform and Imperial Federation. In 1918 he made a gift of pedigree cattle to Rhodesia to encourage ranching and cattle breeding. He also financed the Mackie Anthropological Expedition to Uganda. He was also a major landowner, a Justice of the Peace for Argyllshire, Ayrshire and Lanarkshire, and an active member of the Scottish Unionist Association, serving as chairman from 1922.
He was created a baronet in the 1920 Birthday Honours.

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