Glen Keith 1996-2013 - Gordon & MacPhail - Connoisseurs Choice

Glen Keith is a large Speyside distillery that maintains an extremely low profile. The distillery was founded in 1957 by Seagram’s and was experimental from the start: triple distillation was practised until the 1980s, and Glen Keith also experimented with gas-fired direct heating, Saladin box maltings and distilling with peated water in the 1970s. Some of these experimental spirits were bottled later as Craigduff and Glenisla by Signatory Vintage.

The main business of Glen Keith, though, was always to supply high quality Speyside malt for Seagram’s blends, particularly 100 Pipers. Mothballed in 1999, Glen Keith remained silent until being revived in 2013 after extensive refurbishment by Pernod Ricard, who had taken over Seagram’s Chivas Brothers portfolio in 2001. At auction, independent bottlers are a safer bet than the generally mundane Seagram-era official bottlings, with some outstanding fruity, waxy vintages from the 1960s and 1970s highly sought after.

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.