Laphroaig 12 Year Old - Cadenheads - Late 1960s

An iconic southern Islay distillery, Laphroaig is the benchmark for heavily-peated smoky single malt whisky. The distillery has been Islay’s most successful single malt for many decades now, so much so that in 1908, following a commercial dispute, White Horse’s Peter Mackie famously tried to create a copy of Laphroaig at Lagavulin, leading to the birth of Malt Mill.

Today, the most revered and sought-after Laphroaigs at auction fall broadly into two camps: the old official bottlings of Laphroaig 10-year-old from the late 1960s-1980s; and the extraordinary independent bottlings of 1960s and early 1970s vintages by Gordon & MacPhail, Signatory, Cadenhead’s and the Italian bottlers Samaroli and Intertrade. The common denominator in these legendary bottlings is a remarkably fruity character alongside the phenolic bombast - sadly this fruitiness is no longer found in Laphroaig’s modern distillate.

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.