Scottish Foods-Drinks. Crabbies.

Crabbie’s is a brand of alcoholic ginger beer originating in Scotland. It is owned by UK-based Halewood International Ltd and manufactures at Halewood’s plant in Liverpool.

Crabbie’s traces its founding to 1801 when Miller Crabbie was a merchant in Edinburgh. The business was inherited by his son John Crabbie (1806 – 1891) who went on to found John Crabbie & Co.

In the mid-19th century, John Crabbie acquired a former porter brewery located between Yardheads and Great Junction Street in Edinburgh’s port of Leith. Over the ensuing years the premises were extended mainly to provide bonded warehouses for Crabbie’s whisky business. The company was also engaged in gin rectifying and the production of fruit-based cordials. Of these, Crabbie’s was best known for its green ginger wine which was continued to be made in Leith until the 1980s when John Crabbie & Co was acquired by another Leith distiller and blender, Macdonald & Muir, and production of green ginger wine was transferred to Broxburn, West Lothian. Macdonald & Muir had acquired the Glenmorangie Distillery in 1918 and renamed itself The Glenmorangie Company in 1996. In 2007, it sold the brand to the present owners, Halewood International. Preserving its links with Leith, John Crabbie & Company Limited is in the present day a dormant company with a company address in Mitchell Street, Leith. However, production of Crabbie’s ginger beer takes place in Liverpool, England.