Owned by William Grant & Sons, the Balvenie distillery is a Speyside single malt Scotch whiskey distillery in Dufftown, Scotland. On December 19, 1839, William Grant was born in his father's Dufftown home. [Reference required] At age seven, he started herding cattle on a property near the upper Deveron River. [Reference required] He started out as a shoemaker's apprentice before working as a clerk and eventually becoming a bookkeeper at the Mortlach distillery in 1866. There, he was hired as a clerk and later promoted to manager while learning the craft of distillation. After working in the Mortlach distillery for almost twenty years, Grant decided to leave and purchase a field close to Balvenie Castle. He immediately began to design his distillery, and in the fall of 1886, the first stone was set. Grant worked for the business until his passing in 1923 at the age of 83. Early in 1892, construction of an 18th-century house (Balvenie New House) to be used as a distillery started. The Balvenie Distillery's first distillation happened on May 1, 1893, after the structure had been constructed for fifteen months. One of the most seasoned professionals in the field, David Stewart MBE, Balvenie's Malt Master, started his career with William Grant & Sons in 1962. The procedure by which whiskies are aged in one type of cask, such as ex-Bourbon barrels, then moved into a second type of cask (such as ex-Sherry, Port, or Rum barrels), resulting in a greater depth and complexity of the whisky's ultimate flavor, is possibly the one for which he is most well-known. On July 5, 2016, he earned an MBE from Queen Elizabeth II in recognition of his contributions to the Scotch Whisky Industry.