Tormore 1988-2019 - 30 Year Old - Cadenheads Gold Label - Single Cask - Japanese Mark

Completed in 1959, Tormore was the first new distillery built in Scotland in the 20th century. Tormore's distillery buildings are endearingly incongruous neoclassical agglomerations of granite and glass with verdigris copper rooftops and a musical clock, in front of which some modest topiary and an almost apologetic water feature face directly onto the A95 a stone’s throw from Cragganmore. 

Tormore is one of the quietest distilleries in Speyside in terms of bottlings, with former owners Pernod Ricard reserving the vast majority of its output for their Chivas Brothers subsidiary’s portfolio of blended whiskies. Official bottlings of Tormore are scarce but in the last few years a string of strikingly good long-aged casks of late 1980s and early 1990s vintage Tormore have appeared from indie bottlers.

In June 2022 it was announced that Pernod Ricard had sold Tormore to Elixir Distillers, from whom they had bought The Whisky Exchange the previous November.

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.