John Walker (grocer)

In 1820, the trustees invested in an Italian warehouse, grocery, and wine and spirits shop on the High Street in Kilmarnock.

His store's stock was almost entirely destroyed in an 1852 flood, but the business recovered within a couple of years.

When he returned to take over the business from his ailing father, he used those skills to create Old Highland Whisky (eventually renamed Johnnie Walker Black Label), the blend that made Johnnie Walker whisky famous.

As one writer put it: Although he gave his name to the whisky, John Walker was a far less important figure to the brand than his son, Alexander.

A disastrous flood in Kilmarnock in 1852 had destroyed all of Walker's stock, and when Alexander joined the business in 1856, he persuaded his father to abandon the narrow realm of the grocery trade and to go into wholesale trading.At the beginning, the firm offered a range of spirits: Campbeltown whisky from the Kintyre Peninsula; whisky from the Inner Hebridean Island of Islay, with its pungent smoky flavor; patent still, or grain, whisky; and "Glenlivat" [sic], Speyside whisky.