LOT ID: 0224-916
End Date : Mar 20 2024 08:00 PM
Benromach is a small, traditional old school Highland style distillery in Speyside. Founded in 1898, Benromach distillery changed hands several times before being acquired by Diageo forerunner DCL in 1953. DCL mothballed Benromach in 1983 and sold the distillery a decade later to independent bottlers Gordon & MacPhail. DCL had removed much of Benromach’s equipment and the distillery needed five years of renovation before production restarted in 1998.
Gordon & MacPhail commenced bottling official Benromach whiskies in the mid-1990s, the best of which was a 1974 vintage bottled in 1997, the year before Diageo issued an excellent 1978 Rare Malts edition from retained stock. Gordon & MacPhail relaunched Benromach in 2004 with Benromach Traditional and now bottle a core range alongside old vintages and innovative editions including Benromach Organic and some peated Benromach whiskies. Independent Benromach is vanishingly rare now, although Samaroli, Cadenhead’s and the SMWS have all bottled excellent old vintages in the past.
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.