Arran 2006-2015 - Gordon & MacPhail - Connoisseurs Choice

Founded on the Isle of Arran in 1993, with the first distillation in 1995, the Lochranza distillery was the first of the new wave of Scottish distilleries and blazed a trail for the explosion in small ‘craft’ distillers this century. Lochranza distillery has four stills and makes both peated and unpeated whisky - the unpeated malt is bottled as Arran, while the peated spirit is released as Machrie Moor.

The early releases of Arran single malt were often small batch or single casks, the vast majority of which were finished in wine casks. The distillery’s first core bottling was Arran 10-year-old, which launched in 2006 and has since been joined by age statements up to 25 years old alongside a plethora of limited editions and single cask releases. Independent Arran is abundant and usually excellent quality.

Founded in Elgin as a merchant grocer and wine and spirits wholesaler in 1895, Gordon & MacPhail are one of the oldest independent whisky bottlers in Scotland. Co-founder James Gordon owned shares in Longmorn, Strathisla and Glen Grant, and Gordon & MacPhail were soon bottling officially licensed single malts from several distilleries and sending empty casks from their wine business to be filled with new make spirit and returned for maturation in their Elgin warehouses.

Gordon & MacPhail pioneered high strength single malts at 100 proof (57%) in the 1950s, and in 1968 the company launched Connoisseurs Choice, one of the first integrated ranges of small batch independent whisky bottlings. After finally becoming distillers themselves with the purchase of Benromach in 1993, in 2010 Gordon & MacPhail bottled the first 70-year-old single malt whisky (a Mortlach 1938) and in 2020 the company released the first ever 80-year-old whisky: Glenlivet 1940.