Glen Albyn 1973-1998 - Gordon & MacPhail - Connoisseurs Choice

Glen Albyn is one of the Highland's lost malt whisky distilleries. The distillery was built in Inverness in 1844 but was closed by Diageo forerunner Distillers Company Ltd in 1983 during the whisky lake crisis, and was later demolished to make way for a supermarket. Glen Albyn had one pair of stills and used traditional worm tubs, making a very old school, austere ‘unsexy’ Highland single malt whisky, often with grassy, cereal and minerally notes. 

The only modern official bottling of Glen Albyn was a Rare Malts 1975 26-year-old from 2002, though there was a short-lived 10-year-old OB in the 1970s and some earlier 8-year-olds are known to exist. Indie bottlings have dried up in recent years, with a pair of Gordon & MacPhail single casks the sole new bottlings since 2012; if any more casks of Glen Albyn do still exist, it seems likely they are in G&M's famous Elgin warehouses.

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.