Girvan 1964-2017 - 53 Year Old - Master Of Malts - Single Cask 2015/0238

The Girvan distillery was constructed in 1963 by William Grant & Sons, owners of Glenfiddich and Balvenie, and has been creating quality single grain whisky for the company’s blended whisky brands ever since. The move was necessary after Grant’s had broken a gentleman’s agreement with the rest of the industry not to advertise their whisky on television, imperilling their supply of grain whisky from rivals DCL.

The short-lived Ladyburn single malt distillery was built onsite at Girvan in 1965, but ceased production in 1975. In 2007 the Ailsa Bay single malt distillery was built at Girvan with considerably more success, and now produces around 12m litres of malt whisky per annum alongside Girvan’s output of 100 million litres of grain spirit. Girvan is also home to Grant’s Hendrick’s Gin, which has its own stillhouse within the complex.

Master of Malt began life in 1985 as a mail order whisky business, before opening a whisky shop in Tunbridge Wells in 1990. When the founders decided to sell up in 1996, the company was taken over by local businessman Stefan Petszaft. Petszaft’s son Justin joined the business in 2006 after leaving university and following a major cash injection in 2009 the company began a period of rapid expansion. 

The original Master of Malt company bottled their own whiskies sporadically from the 1980s onwards; the new Master of Malt followed suit on a much larger scale, spinning off brands including That Boutique-y Whisky Company and Darkness and branching into other spirits. The Petszafts sold Atom Group to Budweiser brewers AB-Inbev in 2018, but bought it back in 2024.