Invergordon 1965-2009 - 43 Year Old - Duncan Taylor - Rare Auld - Single Cask 15536

The Invergordon distillery was founded in 1959 and commenced distillation in 1961. Parent company Invergordon Distillers had wider ambitions than just grain distillation and installed pot stills for their Ben Wyvis malt distillery on the Invergordon site in 1965. This was followed by the construction of Tamnavulin and the purchase of other malt distilleries including Bruichladdich, Tullibardine and Deanston. 

Ben Wyvis fell silent in 1977 (though the stills found a new lease of life later at Glengyle) and Invergordon Distillers itself changed hands soon afterwards, subsequently buying Glenallachie and Jura distilleries in the 1980s before a hostile takeover by Whyte & Mackay in 1993. Today, Whyte & Mackay is owned by Philippines company Emperador Inc and Invergordon makes around 35m litres of grain whisky annually for Whyte & Mackay’s blends.

Duncan Taylor was founded in 1938, originally as a cask broker. The Glasgow-based company was acquired in the 1960s by the American blender and entrepreneur Abe Rosenberg, who amassed a large stock of maturing casks. Following Rosenberg’s death in 1994 the Duncan Taylor business lay dormant until the early 2000s, when the trustees offered some casks to businessmen Euan Shand and Alan Gordon. 

Shand and Gordon were so impressed with Duncan Taylor’s stock that they bought the company in 2002 and began bottling some of Rosenberg’s best casks. A string of extraordinary bottlings of Longmorn, Macallan, Bowmore and Springbank were released under the now defunct Peerless range and today Duncan Taylor, with Shand in full control since 2006, is established as one of Scotland’s most interesting independent bottlers.