Mannochmore 1984-1998 - Gordon & MacPhail - Connoisseurs Choice

Mannochmore is a quiet, but very large, Diageo distillery built in 1971 next to the Glenlossie distillery in Speyside. The vast majority of Mannochmore’s spirit goes to Diageo’s Haig blended whisky, with the only ongoing official bottling being the 12-year-old Flora and Fauna edition. Mannochmore’s house style tends towards what might be considered as a more typical Highland style: fresh, grassy, ultra-pure malt that is frequently quite austere and therefore very well-suited to long ageing. 

The best official Mannochmores are the super-austere Rare Malts 1974 edition which appeared in 1997, the same year as the equally excellent 18-year-old Manager’s Dram; and the more oak-driven 1990 vintage bottlings done for the Special Releases in 2009 and 2016. Independent Mannochmores are abundant, but most are quite young; older casks appear occasionally from the likes of Gordon & MacPhail, Cadenhead’s and the SMWS and are well worth tracking down.

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.