Burns Night 2004 - The Whisky Connoisseur

The entrepreneur and social activist Arthur J A Bell founded his Scotland Direct business with his wife Susan in 1973, and was an early pioneer of direct sales mail order, sending high quality Scottish goods around the world. The Whisky Connoisseur was his whisky bottling subsidiary, and came to national prominence when Bell was sued in 1986 by Guinness, who had recently bought the more famous Bell’s whisky company.

The courts ruled in Arthur J A Bell’s favour, however, allowing him to continue to use his own name and signature on his bottles. Throughout the early 1990s Bell’s Whisky Connoisseur range of single malts released some extraordinary whiskies, with the most famous being some sensational Bowmores bottled as Largiemeanoch and a superb Balmenach 1966 bottled as Miltonhaugh.