Tamdhu 1971-2011 - Gordon & MacPhail - The MacPhails Collection

The Tamdhu distillery has been well-stewarded by owners Ian MacLeod Distillers since they acquired it from Edrington Distillers in 2011. As Edrington’s portfolio also included Highland Park and Macallan, Tamdhu had been given little opportunity to shine, and was mothballed in 2009. Under Ian MacLeod, Tamdhu has been revitalised, with a small but popular core range and frequent single cask and limited edition whiskies including a 1963 50-year-old.  

Tamdhu’s great strength is an affinity for sherry casks that, combined with the excellence of the distillery’s spirit, make Tamdhu’s whisky ideal for long maturation.  In recent years the quality and success of official releases have increased Tamdhu’s prestige, although whisky fans of a certain age have long been aware of Tamdhu’s potential thanks to superb indie bottlings of vintages from the 1950s and 1960s from the likes of Cadenhead’s, Kingsbury and Duncan Taylor.

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.