Mosstowie 1979-2001 - Gordon & MacPhail - Connoisseurs Choice

Mosstowie was not a distillery - the name was given to a particular style of experimental whisky made at Miltonduff, a workhorse distillery for the Ballantine’s blended whisky brand. Miltonduff was fitted in 1964 with a pair of Lomond stills - curious hybrids consisting of a normal pot still base with a neck containing rectifying plates like a column still, designed to enable a distiller to increase reflux and produce different styles of spirit.

Mosstowie was made at Miltonduff until 1981, when the Lomond stills were replaced with traditional pot stills. The vast majority of Mosstowie’s whisky was used for blending, but there have been some very successful independent bottlings over the years. Most of the best Mosstowies are from Signatory Vintage, although other notable bottlings have appeared from the SMWS, Gordon & MacPhail, La Maison du Whisky and the Italian bottler Sestante.

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.