Before North Port distillery (or Brechin as it was originally known) was built, the residents of the Angus royal burgh were supplied with whisky by smugglers carrying it south from the north Grampians. The Guthrie family took great pride in their distillery – modern machinery was installed to increase production capacity, though the whisky was distilled in ‘old fashioned’ pot stills and condensed in worm tubs using water from the Den Burn, which ran through the site.

Like the illicit whisky smuggling into Brechin, its water and peat also came from the Grampians, while ‘the very best barley’ was sourced from nearby farms.

North Port’s whisky was never officially bottled as a single malt during its lifetime, although Diageo had it bottled for its Rare Malts series in 1995, 1998 and 1999, as well as under the name ‘Brechin’ for its Special Releases in 2005. In his book The Malt Whisky Companion, whisky writer Michael Jackson described North Port’s whisky as ‘dry, fruity, gin-like. Aperitif’.