The current incarnation of James Eadie Ltd was founded by Rupert Patrick in 2016. Patrick had spent decades in the whisky business with Macleod Distillers, Beam Suntory and Diageo before striking out on his own, first co-founding the cask brokers WhiskyInvestDirect before setting up James Eadie Ltd, which was named after his great-great-grandfather, an illustrious brewer.

The original James Eadie was a Scotsman who relocated to Burton-on-Trent and set up a thriving brewery and pub business in the mid-19th Century. Eadie had been apprenticed at his uncle’s tea blending business in Staffordshire, much like his contemporary Alexander Walker of Johnnie Walker fame, who had also started out as a tea blender in the Walker shop in Kilmarnock. 

Eadie’s business flourished and he eventually built up a chain of 300 pubs in the northeast of England, while using his tea blending experience to create his own whiskies and rums. In 1877, he took advantage of the recently-passed Trade Mark Registration Act to register his James Eadie ‘X’ Special Old Scotch Whisky. After Eadie’s death in the early years of the 20th century the business was eventually sold to Bass Breweries in the 1930s, and the X blend was subsequently discontinued after WWII.

Rupert Patrick started out his new James Eadie whisky company bottling single cask and small batch single malt whiskies, initially at 46% but later including full strength whiskies as well. Patrick then reintroduced James Eadie Trade Mark X in 2017 as a tribute to his ancestor’s brand. The modern Trade Mark X blend was recreated using whiskies named in his great-great-grandfather’s notebooks and cellar ledgers, including Caol Ila, Blair Athol, Aberlour and Lagavulin.