Benrinnes was first built in 1826 at Whitehouse Farm (Speyside) by Peter Mackenzie, before being rebuilt at another site three years later following a flood. After changing hands several times, with owners including Alexander Edward—also the owner or joint owner of Craigellachie, Aultmore, Dallas Dhu and Oban—it became part of Distillers Company Limited in the 1920s. The new managers modernized the distillery and increased its production capacity. In 1974, it began using partial triple distillation, as at Mortlach, leading to a whisky with an animal-like character. This technique was abandoned in 2007. The Benrinnes single malt for a long time remained in the shadows, with no official bottling. It is found in the Flora and Fauna series and in independent bottlings.

A Benrinnes distilled in 1975 and bottled in 2009 by Gordon & MacPhail for the Connoisseurs Choice collection, matured in second-fill sherry casks. Gordon & MacPhail is one of Scotland’’s oldest independent bottlers. It was founded in Elgin in 1895 by James Gordon and John Alexander MacPhail. As was often the case at the time, the business started out as a delicatessen and wine merchant. In 1915, John Alexander MacPhail retired and a new partner joined the business, John Urquhart. He was joined by his son George in 1933, a few years after James Gordon sadly died in a car crash. Gordon & MacPhail works with many of Speyside’’s leading distilleries, from whom it has accumulated considerable stocks. It is also licensed to bottle whiskies for many of them, including Glen Grant, Linkwood, Mortlach, Macallan and Glenlivet. The business really took off in the 1970s, acquiring distributors in a huge range of countries and selling casks to several Italian bottlers in selections that would become legends in their own right. Gordon & MacPhail is still run by the Urquhart family today, from the same building, and is one of the most iconic bottlers in the industry, with incredible stocks of sometimes very old and rare whiskies. The company is in complete control of the entire maturation process. Gordon & MacPhail has also owned the Benromach distillery since 1993. The Connoisseurs Choice range is one of Gordon & MacPhail’’s spearhead collections. Created for the Italian collector and importer Edoardo Giaccone in the early 1970s, it became part of the permanent range in 1979 and has remained so ever since, despite changing greatly, from red and black labels to map labels and today’’s design, as well as the gradient label. Older editions were bottled at 40% and coloured artificially. Today, the whiskies display their natural colouring and are often cask strength.