A memoir series from Gordon & MacPhail
Much has been said about the independent whisky bottling and distribution company, Gordon & MacPhail. Both here and in every other source - print and online - devoted to Scotch whisky. Which doesn't mean that Gordon & MacPhail doesn't have more aces up its sleeve, with which it surprises whisky lovers time and again and fires the imagination of collectors. They have just done it once again.
Announced these days is the debut of a new series of extremely rare, collectible whiskies, the possession of which will clearly enrich even the most unusual collection of rare editions of Scotch whisky. The Recollection Series, as it is referred to, is a new offering from Gordon & MacPhail. It is to include single cask distillates from disused distilleries scattered throughout Scotland, often no longer in existence.
The first, inaugural batch includes three whiskies from distilleries that many of us have surely already forgotten about, as whisky production was halted there decades ago, when many of today's connoisseurs had yet to come into this world. For here is a whisky from St. Magdalene, Glen Mhor and Lochside. All three bottles bear on their labels the information that they come from barrels owned by Gordon & MacPhail, which were filled with distillate entrusted to the Elgin-based company by their producers.
St Magdalene 1982 Private Collection, 54.8% vol., is a 39-year-old whisky from the now legendary Lowlands distillery, which closed in 1983. The whisky was matured in a single refill hogshead barrel made of American oak. Only 165 bottles were filled, each costing £2249.99.
The St Magdalene distillery was located in the village of Linlithgow, a little west of Edinburgh, which meant that whisky from it was often bottled by independent distributors as just Linlithgow. The plant was founded by a certain Sebastian Henderson around 1753. So if St Magdalene had survived the overproduction crisis of the 1980s. In the 1970s, it would be the oldest Scotch whisky maker today. However, it happened differently. Owned at the time by Distillers Company Limited (the progenitor of today's Diageo), the distillery closed in 1983 and its buildings were sold to developers. Some of them were demolished, and those that remained were adapted into apartments. However, the original design of the malt house and malt drying room, topped by a traditional pagoda, has been preserved.
Glen Mhor 1982 Private Collection, 50.8% vol., is a whisky that has spent its entire maturation period, a full 40 years, in a refill hogshead sherry cask. Its contents were enough to fill only 174 bottles, and the purchase of each bottle is also an expense of £2249.99.
The distillery where it was produced was one of three whisky factories once operating in the capital of the Scottish Highlands, Inverness. Like St Magdalene, it was owned by Distillers Company Limited and, like its predecessor, closed in 1983 for exactly the same reason. Its buildings - designed and erected in 1892 by Charles Doig himself, the creator of the Scottish pagoda - were razed three years later. Today, the site of Glen Mhor, just at the mouth of the Caledonian Canal into the North Sea, is home to a sprawling commercial complex.
Lochside 1981 Private Collection, 49.2% vol., is a 40-year-old whisky matured entirely in a single refill hogshead sherry cask. It was bottled in 141 bottles, each costing £3199.99.
Lochside operated in Montrose, on the North Sea coast, about halfway between Aberdeen and Dundee. Founded in 1781 as a brewery (which it also was until 1957), it was a distillery extraordinaire. In 1961, it installed column apparatuses and began producing grain whisky. Quite simply, it was at Lochside that the blending of malt and grain whiskies produced at the same distillery was first undertaken, thus creating the first spirits that today we would call "single blended whisky." In addition, the blending was done right after distillation, and the resulting alcohol was called "blended at birth." Lochside was owned by Allied Lyons (now Pernod Ricard) and survived the crisis until 1992. At that time it was only closed, and in 1997 it was sold to developers and partially demolished. The distinctive distillery tower, seen in the photo above, disappeared from the Montrose landscape only in 2005.
It is worth noting that the three editions mentioned above are the beginning of a longer series, but Gordon & MacPhail does not reveal what whiskies we can expect in the next installments of the Recollection Series.
[06.10.2022 / photo: Gordon & MacPhail]