Livingstone
Alexis Livingstone Burgess
Livingstone is an independent whisky bottling company founded by Alexis Livingstone Burgess, who also owns Burgess Studio, a design company working almost exclusively in Scotch.
Macbeth is the first project by Livingstone. It is a Scotch whisky collection of 42 characters from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, illustrated by Sir Quentin Blake with character notes by Dave Broom and whiskies selected by Elixir Distillers.
What is Livingstone?
It’s a project space really. We’ve been fortunate to work with some fantastic distilleries on some very ambitious projects under Burgess Studio, but there are always some ideas that don’t fit, so I decided to create a company to realise them.
Why Livingstone?
It’s my middle name, from my mother’s side of the family, who are Scots. Her surname is Gibson, and maybe I would have gone for that, but John Gibson began distilling under that name in 1837, and ‘Gibson’s Finest’ is still going strong. Hopefully Livingstone will still be around in 185 years’ time.
What is the story behind the Livingstone logo?
It’s a woodpecker offering you a dram. I was given an old postcard of a woodpecker in a dinner jacket holding a tray of drinks and the analogy struck me – a small, nimble creature that could dart into a warehouse, peck at a cask, and bring out a dram for you. It’s light, and quick, and hopefully generous too (the woodpecker pre-dates the Macbeth collection by some time, which is surprising given how much birds feature in our first project).
