Aultmore 2000-2014 - Gordon & MacPhail - Connoisseurs Choice

Aultmore is a Speyside distillery founded in 1896. The distillery was purchased in 1923 by John Dewar & Sons, who amalgamated with Diageo forerunners DCL soon afterwards in 1925. Aultmore was rebuilt and modernised in 1971, when the distillery was expanded to four stills. In 1998 Aultmore was one of the five Dewar’s distilleries sold to Bacardi as part of the deal with the Monopolies and Mergers Commission that approved the creation of Diageo.

Aultmore has spent most of its life making single malt for Dewar’s and other blended whiskies. A 12-year-old official bottling appeared sporadically throughout the 1970s and 1980s before being reincarnated in United Distillers’ Flora & Fauna range in 1991. Vintage cask strength Aultmores were released in the 1990s for Flora & Fauna, the Rare Malts and for the distillery’s centenary. Under Bacardi, the 12-year-old Aultmore was rebranded again before Aultmore's first official full range was finally launched in 2014. Independent Aultmore is abundant.

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.