Glen Grant 21 Year Old - Gordon & MacPhail - 1990s

Founded in 1840, Glen Grant is one of Speyside’s largest and greatest distilleries. The distillery became part of Seagram’s Chivas Brothers group in the 1970s, and was subsequently acquired in 2001 by Pernod Ricard, who sold Glen Grant to Campari in 2006. 

Glen Grant’s association with Italy goes back much further, however. Gordon & MacPhail were already licensed bottlers of Glen Grant in the 1960s when the two companies began a highly beneficial relationship with Italian hotelier and importer Armando Giovinetti which led directly to Glen Grant’s ongoing dominance of the Italian single malt market.

Glen Grant’s spirit is particularly well-suited to very long ageing in both bourbon and sherry casks, making it the perfect fit for Gordon & MacPhail who released a 72-year-old Glen Grant in 2020 and whose semi-official licensed bottlings of Glen Grant are legendary. Indie Glen Grants are abundant and are generally excellent value.

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.