Gordon & MacPhail withdraws from whisky purchases

One of the oldest and most prestigious independent whisky bottling companies stops buying fresh distillate from producers.

For any whisky aficionado, Gordon & MacPhail is an icon without whom it is difficult to imagine the world of single malt Scotch whisky. At a time when few producers bottled their products as single malt whiskies, Gordon & MacPhail editions served as a sort of official or semi-official edition of the. It was thanks to them decades ago that we got a taste of Mortlach, Longmorn, Convalmore, Ardmore, Glenburgie, Scapa or Imperial. More recently, the company has focused a bit more on stocks of extremely old whiskey, bottling, for example, Glen Grant 1948 72yo, Milton 1949 72yo, Glen Grant 1948 74yo, and finally Glenlivet 1940 80yo, which for a time was the oldest whiskey ever bottled. Unofficially, Gordon & MacPhail is said to have had a hand in breaking this record and releasing Macallan The Reach 81yo whisky in February 2022.

Founded in 1895, the company has evolved from a modest grocery store with a liquor department to one of the biggest giants in the Scotch whisky industry. Her store, located in Elgin on South Street, has become a true mecca for many. Today, the company owns two thriving distilleries and, according to an official announcement, intends to focus on their products and completely phase out the independent bottling of young whiskey from other producers.

According to company officials in its official announcement, made public today, Gordon & MacPhail's mission as a bottler of independent editions of young whiskey has come to a natural end. Due to the huge demand for Scotch whisky and the global interest in the liquor, today almost every producer bottles their own products. What was once the domain of independent distributors such as Gordon & MacPhail is now run directly by distillery owners, by the producers themselves. Gordon & MacPhail sees no need to compete with them at the level of editions of several and several years old.

Gordon & MacPhail, unlike the vast majority of independent bottlers in the market today, did not buy barrel-aged whiskey, but shipped its casks directly to producers, where they were filled with fresh distillate and matured either at Gordon & MacPhail's warehouses or at producers' sites, but under the supervision of the company's.

As the old boomers in the industry well know, nothing happens overnight in the Scottish distilling industry, and time - and a long time at that - is one of the elements of the whisky-making process, one of its most important factors. So, even though Gordon & MacPhail is phasing out purchases of fresh distillate, there will still be exclusive old editions of whisky on the market for decades to come, branded by the famous bottler from Elgin. Whiskies collected over more than a century of the company's operations and aged in its warehouses. What's more, the famous South Street store has already begun work on transforming it into a museum of sorts, a meeting place for whiskey lovers and a place to taste rare editions of whiskey. So it looks like Gordon & MacPhail is shifting its emphasis from the youth whisky bottler to a more upscale clientele, and intends to capitalize on the ever-growing market for whisky tourism, which has been developing at a dizzying pace in Scotland in recent years.

Time will tell what of today's decisions and related actions by Gordon & MacPhail will turn out to be a hit and what will be a miss. What is known for sure, however, is that from a bottler and distributor, the company will slowly become a manufacturer. With a shortage of stockpiles for bottling whiskies aged ten years and slightly more, the first editions of whiskey from The Cairn, a modern distillery near Grantown-on-Spey, which started production last year, will be ready for bottling. As Gordon & MacPhail announces, the whisky produced there will see the light of day as a single malt whisky no sooner than as a 12-year-old. The company is not severing business ties with the three bodegas from which it has so far purchased sherry seasoned barrels, and The Cairn's potential capacity of 2 million liters of pure alcohol per year seems to provide a secure future for its owner. The picture is completed by more than half as much (700,000. liters per year), but still significant production of the old-school even Benromach distillery.

Although the ink has not yet had time to completely dry on Gordon & MacPhail's official announcement on the matter, the web has been abuzz with conjecture and speculation about the reasons for this decision. It is said that it was the producers who decided to deny Gordon & MacPhail further sales of the fresh distillate. There is talk of as many as 60 distilleries making such a decision at one time. There is talk of another overproduction crisis looming in the Scottish distilling industry and the first symptoms of it in the form of this decision by Gordon & MacPhail. Hard to speculate on speculation. Time will tell. Although we will probably never know how it really was.

For the time being, however, the House of Whisky Online offers a wide range of whiskies bottled by Gordon & MacPhail - from the aforementioned basic, semi-official editions to the oldest, rarest and most expensive collector's editions of the Elgin bottler. Please visit.


[24.07.2023 / photo: House of Whisky Online]