Glen Mhor 1975-1992 - 17 Year Old - Cadenheads Original Collection - Single Cask

Glen Mhor was an old-school Highland distillery that was closed by Diageo forerunner DCL during the whisky lake crisis in 1983. Built in Inverness in 1892, Glen Mhor made a rich, oily, grassy, austere Highland single malt whisky and was run independently for most of its life by distillers and blenders Mackinlay & Birnie, who also owned the neighbouring Glen Albyn distillery in Inverness. DCL bought Mackinlay & Birnie in 1972.

Mackinlay & Birnie bottled Glen Mhor as a single malt very early on, and 1950s-70s official bottlings of Glen Mhor 6-year-old, 10-year-old and 12-year-old crop up at auction from time to time. Diageo released two 1970s vintages in the Rare Malts series in the early 2000s and Gordon & MacPhail bottled high class Glen Mhor under license and for their own ranges. Some great Glen Mhor whiskies have been bottled by Moon Import, Cadenhead’s and the SMWS, among others.

In 1842 George Duncan established a wine merchant and distillery agency business in Aberdeen. Duncan was joined in the early 1850s by his brother-in-law William Cadenhead, who took over the business after Duncan’s death in 1858, changing the company’s name to Wm. Cadenhead. When Cadenhead died in 1904 the company passed to his nephew Robert Duthie, who developed the spirits side of the business.

Duthie died suddenly in 1931, and employee Ann Oliver was put in charge of Cadenhead’s. Sadly, Oliver’s tenure ended in financial difficulty and on her retirement in 1972 the business was forced to sell its entire inventory. Cadenhead’s was acquired soon afterwards by J & A Mitchell, proprietors of Springbank distillery, who relocated the business to Campbeltown. Cadenhead’s has flourished under Mitchell’s stewardship, releasing many legendary single malt bottlings in the 1980s and 1990s and now has outlets in Edinburgh and London as well as Campbeltown.