Rosebank 1989-2000 - Gordon & MacPhail - Connoisseurs Choice

The writing was on the wall for Rosebank in 1988 when owners United Distillers preferred the less accomplished but much more tourist-friendly Glenkinchie for their new Classic Malts series. Rosebank closed in 1993, after UD balked at a £2m upgrade to the distillery’s effluent treatment facility, and soon became a cult lost distillery - the Lowland equivalent of Brora or Port Ellen. Miraculously, Diageo have now restored both Brora and Port Ellen, while Rosebank was rebuilt under new owners Ian MacLeod Distillers and began distilling again in June 2023.

Today, new bottlings of old Rosebank are dwindling, and prices have increased dramatically over the last decade. Essential official bottlings of Rosebank include the glorious 1979 and 1981 Rare Malt Editions, and the splendid Special Releases from 2007, 2011 and 2014. Indie Rosebanks from the early 1990s vintages are generally excellent and usually more affordable at auction.

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.