William Grant ‘plans for 20, 30, 40 years’

As a fifth-generation family member in the William Grant & Sons dynasty, Kirsten Grant Meikle has a lot to live up to. She tells The Spirits Business about her views on luxury, ‘long-term’ strategies, and why her company will always be family-owned.

Kirsten Grant Meikle is the great-great-granddaughter of William Grant

*This feature was first published in the September 2016 issue of The Spirits Business magazine

It may come as a surprise to some that wine was the first of love of Kirsten Grant Meikle, great-great-granddaughter of William Grant, the founder of renowned UK spirits group William Grant & Sons.

“I didn’t always think I would go into the family business,” Grant Meikle tells me over the phone during a break from hosting clients at Glenfiddich Distillery – a significant part of her role as director of Prestige at William Grant & Sons UK. “I was really into wine and I had done my wine diploma, so that was something I was really focused on and moving into spirits wasn’t something I deliberately chose to do. It was something my uncle (the late Charles Grant Gordon) decided he wanted me to do.”

Grant Meikle’s pursuit of wine knowledge began after completing her undergraduate degree, when she ran a wine bar in Edinburgh. She then spent eight years at on-trade drinks supplier Matthew Clark across a variety of roles spanning sales and category management.

Her growing expertise in the on-trade did not go unnoticed by Charles Grant Gordon, former chairman and life president of William Grant & Sons, who passed away in 2013. Grant Gordon paid his niece a visit in 2011 and invited her to join the family business; a resolute man described as a “key driving force” behind the growth of the Grant’s and Glenfiddich Scotch whisky brands, he was unlikely to be refused.

Grant Meikle says of her move to the company: “It was a big challenge and something different, but it wasn’t really in my career plan. I was always interested in the business, I was a shareholder in the business, but it wasn’t my first plan to join the business. It’s kind of by default really [and] it was very daunting. Daunting and challenging.”

Nevertheless, in June 2011 she became head of development, UK on-trade, at First Drinks Brands, then the wholly-owned UK distribution arm of William Grant & Sons. Three years later, First Drinks was renamed William Grant & Sons UK as part of a wider reorganisation of the business, which also saw the creation of a ‘Prestige’ arm. Headed by Grant Meikle, the unit focuses on promoting its super- and ultra-premium portfolio to hundreds of key on- and off-trade accounts in the UK, including members’ clubs and specialist retailers.

“We started looking at the more premium end of the market and how we were dealing with that in the UK,” she says of Prestige’s genesis. “So I began a project to examine how we looked at prestige in the high-end on-trade and also in high-end retail. I wrote a paper that said this is how we should deal with it, and that was that.”

Grant Meikle’s great-grandfather, Captain Charles Grant, set up the GlenDronach Distillery

Despite being a fifth generation Grant family member, Grant Meikle is the only person in her immediate family to play an active part in the business. In fact, she is the first in her branch of the family – called the Glendronachers – to work for William Grant & Sons. After all, her great-grandfather, Captain Charles Grant, set up the GlenDronach Distillery after being thrown out of the business by his father. “He was then known as the black sheep,” quips Grant Meikle.

As family owners of one of the world’s largest independent spirits companies, which reports sales of around £1 billion annually, the Grants and the Gordons perhaps find themselves in the spotlight more than most drinks executives.

“Being family in a family business, you have to be on top of your game better than everyone else because you are under a microscope,” admits Grant Meikle. “The company has got our name on, so people would of course treat you differently. But I have been around for so long now that nobody really thinks like that any more. Now I am just part of the furniture.”

Company vision

The proverbial furniture of William Grant & Sons has shifted and multiplied massively over the years – is it difficult to maintain a family-owned mentality as the business and its brands continue to grow internationally?

“If you consider the way that we think about the business, no, I don’t think it is tough,” rebuffs Grant Meikle. “We believe that if we just focus on that, then it’s not going to change. Our vision statement is to be the most coveted spirits company in the world and that drives everything that we do, really.”

For Grant Meikle, the difference between a multinational drinks company and a family-owned one is stark and largely relates to “long-term vision” – a term which frequently pops up during our conversation.

“As shareholders we answer to ourselves and we don’t have to answer to venture capitalists or to the City,” she states. “Everything we do is for ourselves and for the long term. Sometimes we make decisions that might not be that obvious to the outside world. If you consider Balvenie, to have a malting floor is really unusual and highly inefficient but it’s something we want to do because we believe in it.”

She adds: “It’s about long-term planning and our planning cycles are for 20, 30, 40 years. We consider ourselves to be custodians of the brand, not owners of the business. Our job is to pick up the business and pass on to the next generation in a better state than we found it in.”

A staunch advocate of William Grant & Son’s long-term vision was Stella David, the company’s former CEO, who departed earlier this year and joined Bacardi’s board of directors. She was succeeded by Simon Hunt, the firm’s former chief commercial officer, on 1 March 2016. “We have on-going and frequent discussions, Simon and I,” laughs Grant Meikle. “Simon is a massive supporter of us and he’s been a massive support to me. When we first started looking at separating out Prestige, he was really the driver behind it.”

Monkey Shoulder’s ‘Ginger Monkey’ serve

On William Grant’s Prestige brands, Grant Meikle says the focus will continue to be on aged whiskies such as Glenfiddich and The Balvenie single malts, but also the fast-growing Monkey Shoulder blended malt. When it comes to releasing new variants among these labels, the process of selecting liquid is “collaborative” between the marketing and production departments.

“Brian Kinsman [master blender for William Grant & Sons] might say, ‘We’ve got some parcels of this’, or we might say ‘We’ve got a gap for this’,” explains Grant Meikle. “Then we have to ask, does the market require it? Is this the right time to sell this whisky? We might decide we want to keep it for another 10 years and turn it into another product. There’s no rush: the whole thing about being in the whisky industry is patience.”

In-house innovation

Unlike other leading spirits producers, William Grant & Sons has grown and diversified its portfolio organically – that is, through the in-house creation of brands rather than acquisitions. During the time that Grant Meikle has been serving as director of Prestige, the group has launched the Art Deco-inspired House of Hazelwood blended Scotch series, unveiled the highly innovative Ailsa Bay single malt and made Kininvie available in markets outside Taiwan for the first time.

Is the creation of brands from the ground up part of the company’s integral strategy?
“There’s not really a formula for that,” admits Grant Meikle. “We built Ailsa Bay Distillery because we wanted some more malt and we had the space to do it. Of course, we’ve always been a very innovative company and we get a lot of joy out of creating products ourselves, rather than buying products. But it goes back to what we’ve got to sell. We have to make decisions about how to present these whiskies in the trade.”

However, the company did make a rare and much anticipated acquisition in 2014, purchasing Drambuie from its family owners, the MacKinnons, for an undisclosed sum. Grant Meikle confirms the whisky-based liqueur will be fully integrated into the portfolio of William Grant & Sons UK by April 2017, moving over from current distributor Bacardi.

“Drambuie is a core brand at William Grant UK, so it’s something we [the Prestige team] will be looking at, most definitely. My team are really excited to have Drambuie actually – we’ve been making some great Rusty Nails in the office.”

But being known mainly as a producer of Scotch whisky, despite owning the leading Hendrick’s Gin and Sailor Jerry Spiced Rum brands, is William Grant looking to close any portfolio gaps? “We are always looking around and it’s an ongoing process to keep our eye on the market,” says Grant Meikle. “We’ll never rush into making any purchase decisions and we’ll never pay more than something was worth to us. The brand would have to be complementary to our own portfolio and it would be a very considered decision.”

However, she adds that the company will remain true to its luxury focus: “I couldn’t see us diversifying into the mainstream. We have a lot of whisky stocks because we have been around for a long time, so this wouldn’t be something we would immediately consider. Plus, going back to our vision statement to be the most coveted spirits company in the world – it would be completely contradictory to this.” Indeed, Grant Meikle hopes her personal legacy will be as part of “the generation who really drove the premiumisation of the William Grant & Sons business”.

With no shareholders to answer to and less emphasis on quarterly sales results, William Grant & Sons’ focus remains firmly on durable rather than fleeting spirits trends. However, Grant Meikle stresses this does not mean the company is content to rest on its laurels.

“Everything moves at pace here at William Grant,” she concludes. “I think the most exciting thing is that we do what we say we are going to do, which is to pass on the business in a bigger, better place than when we picked it up. Remaining family-owned is the most important thing to us. So in everything we do, if we focus on that, then I’m happy.”