Glen Moray 1998-2019 - 20 Year Old - Cadenheads Gold Label - Single Cask

One of Speyside’s larger distilleries, Glen Moray was the black sheep of Macdonald & Muir’s portfolio for decades, where it was understandably overshadowed by Glenmorangie (and later Ardbeg). The distillery was sold by Glenmorangie plc’s owners LVMH to French company La Martiniquaise at the end of 2008, since when it has supplied fillings for Label 5 blended whisky, which is unknown in the UK but one of the top ten Scotch whisky brands worldwide.

Away from the bottom shelf wine finishes first popularised in the Glenmorangie era, official bottlings of Glen Moray have included some superb old vintage editions, with the 1959 40-year-old and several excellent 1960s-70s vintage bottlings demonstrating what the distillery was really capable of. La Martiniquaise have not changed the formula much but deserve credit for releasing further prestige editions including the recent Glen Moray Mastery.

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.