Brechin—today known as North Port—was founded in 1820 by David, John and Alexander Guthrie in the town of the same name, also home to the Glencadam distillery built a few years later. It was eventually renamed after a gate in the town walls. After being managed by the Guthrie family for a century, the distillery was sold to Distillers Company Limited (DCL) in 1922, who transferred it to their subsidiary Scottish Malt Distillers (SMD). The distillery was mothballed in 1928 and remained closed almost without interruption until 1945, when it reopened. It closed again in 1983, at the height of Whisky Loch. After being gradually dismantled, it was destroyed in 1994 to make way for a supermarket. The distillery was for a time part of the Rare Malts range but is most frequently found in independent bottlings.

A North Port distilled in 1974 and bottled in 1993 by Gordon & MacPhail for the Connoisseurs Choice range. 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 in the range display their natural colouring and are often cask strength.