Miltonduff 1969-2010 - Gordon & MacPhail

Miltonduff distillery is a large, quiet Speyside workhorse, spending its days providing spirit for Ballantine’s blended whisky, with which it has been associated since 1936 when Ballantine’s owner Hiram Walker bought the distillery. Miltonduff and Ballantine’s became part of Pernod Ricard’s portfolio when former owner Allied Domecq was gobbled up by Pernod in 2005. In 2022 a major expansion plan was announced for Miltonduff that will take the distillery’s capacity to almost 16m litres per year.

In 1964, during the Hiram Walker days, Miltonduff was fitted with a pair of Lomond stills, on which the experimental Mosstowie single malt was produced until 1981. Independent bottlings of Mosstowie can still be found at auction, with excellent examples by Signatory and Sestante. Official bottlings of Miltonduff are rare, but there have been some great casks over the years from the likes of Gordon & MacPhail, Duncan Taylor, the SMWS and the Italian bottlers Sestante, Samaroli and Moon Import.

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.