Glen Albyn 1972 Gordon & MacPhail bottled 1993 Connoisseurs Choice ---- (Brown)

The Glen Albyn distillery was built on the site of a former mill in 1846 by James Sutherland, the Provost of Inverness, which was once home to many breweries and maltings. The site was turned back into a flour mill in 1866, before once again becoming a distillery in 1884. The distillery manager, John Birni, left to form a partnership with Leith blender Charles Mackinlay. They built the neighbouring Glen Mhor distillery in 1892 and bought Glen Albyn in 1920. Both distilleries became the property of the Distillers Company Limited (DCL) after it bought Mackinlay & Birnie in 1972. They were both closed in 1983—the truly annus horribilis of the Whisky Loch—and have since been demolished. A few rare official bottlings of Glen Albyn exist from the 1960s and 1970s, as well as in the Rare Malts range and independent bottlings.

A Glen Albyn distilled in 1972 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 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.

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