Benriach 1997-2012 - Gordon & MacPhail - Connoisseurs Choice

Benriach distillery was founded in 1897 but was closed in 1900 and remained in mothballs for over six decades. The distillery reopened in 1965 under owners Glenlivet, who were acquired by Canadian distillers Seagram in 1978. Seagram was dismantled in 2001, and Benriach was sold by new owners Pernod Ricard in 2004 to a consortium led by Billy Walker, who established the distillery as a top class single malt whisky brand before eventually selling it to Brown Forman in 2016.

Seagram’s neglectful tenure as stewards of Benriach yielded only a mundane 10-year-old official bottling; by contrast, the Walker era saw a flood of extraordinary single cask editions, with the 1976 vintage confirmed as one of the distillery’s greatest. Walker also popularised Benriach’s more heavily peated spirit, which had been produced since 1972. Top class 1960s and 1970s vintage Benriach whisky has been independently bottled by Gordon & MacPhail, Duncan Taylor and Signatory Vintage among others.

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.