Linlithgow (Lowlands) was at one time home to five distilleries, including St Magdalene, which was built in the mid-18th century by Sebastian Henderson. It was bought by Adam Dawson in 1798. In 1912, as the family business A&J Dawson struggled to keep up with the competition and the market’‘s decline, it was liquidated and St Magdalene sold to Distillers Company Limited, which, two years later, joined Scottish Malt Distillers, alongside Rosebank. Like so many other distilleries, it closed in 1983, at the height of the Whisky Loch overproduction crisis that hit the industry in the 1980s. Bottlings of St Magdalene are not easy to come by and are found in Diageo’‘s Special Release and Rare Malts selections, as well as from independent bottlers, often under the name Linlithgow.

A Linlithgow (St Magdalene) distilled in 1982 and bottled at cask strength by Murray McDavid in 2007 after 25 years of maturation in a bourbon cask and finishing in a cognac cask. Murray McDavid is an independent bottler founded in 1996 by Mark Reynier, Simon Coughlin and Gordon Wright, the former director of Springbank. They specialized in ageing whiskies in unusual casks, particularly wine casks, adding the term “ACE-ing” to their labels, standing for “additional cask enhancement”. After being bought by the Rémy Cointreau group at the same time as the Bruichladdich distillery that had been reopened by Murray McDavid in 2000, it is now owned by the broker Aceo Ltd and continues to operate from the former Coleburn distillery in Speyside, whose warehouses it uses. A limited edition of 1,800 bottles.