Largiemeanoch (Bowmore) 17 Year Old - The Whisky Connoisseur - Miniature

Constructed in 1779, Bowmore is Islay’s oldest distillery and dominates the island’s capital. After changing hands several times early in the 20th century, Bowmore distillery was bought by Stanley P. Morrison in 1963 and embarked on a golden era. This lasted until the early 1980s, when a strangely soapy character took hold in Bowmore’s spirit, before another run of extraordinary quality in the 1990s. The Japanese firm Suntory took full control of Bowmore in 1994, the year after the first release of Black Bowmore, a legendary whisky that catalysed the prestige whisky market.

Early official bottlings of Bowmore are highly sought after, particularly the Sherriff’s bottlings, the stunning Bicentenary editions, and the 1950s-70s vintage editions that appeared from the early 1980s. The modern Bowmore 1964 Trilogies and subsequent prestige bottlings are also fiercely contested by deep-pocketed fans, as are the numerous fabulous old indie bottlings of 1960s vintages by Samaroli, Giaccone, Duncan Taylor, Signatory and others.

The entrepreneur and social activist Arthur J A Bell founded his Scotland Direct business with his wife Susan in 1973, and was an early pioneer of direct sales mail order, sending high quality Scottish goods around the world. The Whisky Connoisseur was his whisky bottling subsidiary, and came to national prominence when Bell was sued in 1986 by Guinness, who had recently bought the more famous Bell’s whisky company.

The courts ruled in Arthur J A Bell’s favour, however, allowing him to continue to use his own name and signature on his bottles. Throughout the early 1990s Bell’s Whisky Connoisseur range of single malts released some extraordinary whiskies, with the most famous being some sensational Bowmores bottled as Largiemeanoch and a superb Balmenach 1966 bottled as Miltonhaugh.