Glen Keith 17 Year Old 1963 Gordon & Macphail Brown Label Connoisseurs Choice Speyside Single Malt Scotch Whisky (1980) 5cl Miniature

This Glen Keith was distilled in 1963 and, after maturing for 17 years in oak casks, was bottled in 1980 and miniatures created although for some odd reason omitting the bottling date or age statement. The strength also was a little higher than the claimed 40% often in these releases. 

Arguably the most famous independent bottler of Scotch whisky there is. Gordon & MacPhail was founded in Elgin in 1895 by James Gordon and John Alexander MacPhail. It is now owned by the Urquhart Family who have bow bottled over 350 different expressions from around 69 different distilleries. Gordon & MacPhail is the Trading name of Speymalt Whiskies while also owning the Benromach distillery, which they purchased in 1993. Some of the brands include Connoisseurs Choice, Cask Strength, Rare Old and Speymalt.

About Glen Keith

With sales of Chivas Regal rising throughout the 1950s, Sam Bronfman felt that he needed another distillery to supply juice for his blends – not just Chivas but Passport and 100 Pipers. He picked the site of a former meal mill in Keith, directly behind his existing Strathisla plant. As well as providing fillings for blends, Glen Keith became the Seagram’s experimental plant and still houses the Chivas Brothers lab.

It ran triple-distilled malt from the word go and alternated it with double distilled until the 1980s, ran trials with a wheat mash, was the first distillery to use gas-fired direct heating (all its stills are now steam-driven) and in its time also produced heavy peated variants [Glenisla] one made with peat smoke being passed through water which was then concentrated and the other in the normal manner. There were also trials with different yeast types. The fact that the stills were different shapes and sizes helped in these innovative trials.

It was mothballed in 1999, only reopening (under new owner Pernod Ricard) in 2013 after a complete refit which saw a new mash tun and washbacks being installed.

While there was a 10-year-old bottling it was never a front-line malt. There are occasional sightings of it (and Glen Isla) from independent bottlers.

40% ABV

5cl / 50ml