Mortlach 15 Year Old - Gordon & MacPhail - Early 2000s

Mortlach is one of the greatest Speyside whiskies in Diageo’s portfolio. The distillery’s robust, gutsy, earthy, beefy new make is a result of running the stills fast and using worm tub condensers, which minimises copper contact and gives a powerfully flavoured, deliberately sulphury new make that is frequently matured in sherry casks. 

Following the discontinuation of the much-loved Mortlach 16-year-old Flora & Fauna, the first official Mortlach core range was introduced in 2014 but flopped disastrously due to comically high pricing; the subsequent relaunch in 2018, with a return to reality-based pricetags, has been much more successful.  Gordon & MacPhail were previous licensed bottlers of Mortlach and have bottled the greatest examples from the distillery, including the famous Book of Kells editions and the extraordinary Generations bottlings, which included the first 70 and 75-year-old single malt whiskies ever bottled.

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.