MacAskill was not the first to clear the land at Talisker. Donald Macleod had let the estate to Lauchlan MacLean in 1818, and it was then that the process of moving people from the bulk of the land to displace them with more profitable sheep was begun. MacAskill, then, only completed the work, taking over Talisker estate in 1825. The distillery was a key part of his strategy. It would provide employment for those who remained on the land, and also a market for the barley produced on the diminishing areas of land that were set aside for arable cultivation. Built in 1830 at Carbost, one of the communities on the shores of Loch Harport that he had largely cleared of families, the distillery was described by a former minister of the Parish as "one of the greatest curses that, in the ordinary course of Providence, could befall it or any other place".

Curse or cursed? It certainly appears that neither the distillery, nor Talisker estate, lived up to MacAskill's expectations. In 1840 Hugh inherited estates on Mull, and with it Calfary Castle, where much of his efforts were to be directed. And despite the elegant and comfortable lifestyle that Talisker House offered, Hugh moved his family to Rudha an Dunain in near by Braccadale in 1846. Three years later he gave up his lease on the Talisker lands. He gave up the distillery, managed by himself and his brother Kenneth with a brewer, Archibald Sinclair from Campbeltown, in 1848. The lease for the distillery and lands was transferred by the MacAskills to the North of Scotland Bank and the general management was passed over to the manager there, Jack Westland (Sinclair remained brewer until his death in the late1860s). This suggests they may have been in financial difficulty at the time; when Kenneth MacAskill died in 1854 he was apparently the sole partner in the business, leaving stock intrade and distillery utensils to the value of £ 1374 3s 2d, and book debts worth £ 259 12s 8d. When Hugh MacAskill died in 1863he left surprisingly little (only £ 2713 4s 1d), and had no interest in the distillery.