Glen Mhor 1980-2007 - Gordon & MacPhail

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.

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.