The Scotch Industry Has Been Here Before. The Leaders Who Understand That Are the Ones Worth Listening To: A Conversation with Ewen Mackintosh, Non Executive Director, Douglas Laing and Co., former CEO, Gordon and MacPhail

Ewen Mackintosh spent a decade leading Gordon and MacPhail, one of Scotland’s most respected independent whisky businesses and the custodian of some of the oldest and rarest casks in the industry. He is now a Non Executive Director at Douglas Laing and Co. He has watched the Scotch whisky industry from the inside through multiple cycles – the crash of the 1980s, the smaller corrections of the 1990s and 2000s, and now the current downturn that the SWA confirmed in February 2026 has taken total export value from £6.2 billion in 2022 to £5.3 billion in 2025.

His perspective is specific, historically grounded, and deliberately free of the optimism that tends to accompany industry commentary during difficult periods. The current downturn, in his view, is not a blip. It is the beginning of a longer and more impactful correction than most people in the industry are prepared to acknowledge. The question he is more interested in than how bad it gets is what kind of business comes out the other side.

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