Whyte & Mackay Blenders Set

James Whyte & Charles Mackay founded their whisky business in Glasgow in 1882. The company acquired their first distillery, Dalmore, in 1960, recruited Richard Paterson in 1970 and picked up Fettercairn distillery in 1973, shortly after the business had fallen into a long and frequently painful ownership merry-go-round.

Whyte & Mackay purchased Isle of Jura and the Invergordon grain distillery in 1995 and, following a troubled management buyout in 2001, fell into the hands of the notorious Vijay Mallya’s United Spirits Ltd in 2007. In 2014, with Mallya’s empire unravelling, the company was sold to the Philippines company Emperador Inc and has enjoyed relative stability since. Legendary frontman and Master Blender Richard Paterson celebrated his 50th anniversary with the company in 2020.

Distillery bottlings are, as the name suggests, bottled by or for the distillery from which the whisky has originated and are thus often referred to as Official Bottlings or OBs. Distillery bottlings are generally more desirable for collectors and usually fetch higher prices at auction than independent bottlings. They are officially-endorsed versions of the whisky from a particular distillery and are therefore considered the truest expression of the distillery’s character.

This ideal of the distillery character is regarded so seriously by the distilleries and brand owners that casks of whisky that are considered to vary too far from the archetype are frequently sold on to whisky brokers and independent bottlers. When this happens, it is often with the proviso that the distillery’s name is not allowed to be used when the cask is bottled for fear of diminishing or damaging the distillery’s character and status.