Bowmore 1979-1990 - 11 Year Old - Cadenhead Miniature

Constructed in 1779, Bowmore is Islay’s oldest distillery and dominates the island’s capital. After changing hands several times early in the 20th century, Bowmore distillery was bought by Stanley P. Morrison in 1963 and embarked on a golden era. This lasted until the early 1980s, when a strangely soapy character took hold in Bowmore’s spirit, before another run of extraordinary quality in the 1990s. The Japanese firm Suntory took full control of Bowmore in 1994, the year after the first release of Black Bowmore, a legendary whisky that catalysed the prestige whisky market.

Early official bottlings of Bowmore are highly sought after, particularly the Sherriff’s bottlings, the stunning Bicentenary editions, and the 1950s-70s vintage editions that appeared from the early 1980s. The modern Bowmore 1964 Trilogies and subsequent prestige bottlings are also fiercely contested by deep-pocketed fans, as are the numerous fabulous old indie bottlings of 1960s vintages by Samaroli, Giaccone, Duncan Taylor, Signatory and others.

In 1842 George Duncan established a wine merchant and distillery agency business in Aberdeen. Duncan was joined in the early 1850s by his brother-in-law William Cadenhead, who took over the business after Duncan’s death in 1858, changing the company’s name to Wm. Cadenhead. When Cadenhead died in 1904 the company passed to his nephew Robert Duthie, who developed the spirits side of the business.

Duthie died suddenly in 1931, and employee Ann Oliver was put in charge of Cadenhead’s. Sadly, Oliver’s tenure ended in financial difficulty and on her retirement in 1972 the business was forced to sell its entire inventory. Cadenhead’s was acquired soon afterwards by J & A Mitchell, proprietors of Springbank distillery, who relocated the business to Campbeltown. Cadenhead’s has flourished under Mitchell’s stewardship, releasing many legendary single malt bottlings in the 1980s and 1990s and now has outlets in Edinburgh and London as well as Campbeltown.