Cuvée presentation
A small batch Port Ellen distilled in 1979, aged in Sherry casks and bottled in 2013 by the independent bottling company Gordon & MacPhail. This company was founded in Elgin in 1895 by James Gordon and John Alexander Macphail. At the time, it was a delicatessen and wine merchant. In 1915 John Alexander MacPhail retired, and a new partner joined: John Urquhart. His son George joined the business in 1933, a few years after the death of James Gordon in a car accident. They worked with several major distilleries from Speyside, where they amassed considerable stocks. Gordon & MacPhail was also licensed to bottle whiskies for distilleries such as Glen Grant, Linkwood, Mortlach, Macallan and Glenlivet. The business flourished in the 1970s with distributors in several countries, as well as with the sales of casks to several Italian bottlers in selections that would become legendary. Today, Gordon & MacPhail is still run by the Urquhart family in its original building and is one of the most iconic bottlers in the industry with an abundance of whiskies – some of which are very old and extremely rare. Gordon & MacPhail is in total control of the entire maturation process. They have also owned the Benromach distillery since 1993. A limited edition of 654 bottles.
The distillery Port Ellen
Founded in 1825 by A. K. Mackay & Co. on the southern coast of the Isle of Islay, Port Ellen came under the control of John Ramsay in 1836, a period during which the site notably contributed to the development of whisky exports to North America. The distillery became part of the Distillers Company Limited (DCL) in 1925 and subsequently underwent a prolonged period of closure before returning to production in the late 1960s. Primarily operated to supply malt whisky for blends, Port Ellen ceased distillation in May 1983 as part of a broader rationalisation of Scotch whisky production capacity. Stocks distilled before the closure continued to mature and were subsequently bottled, notably through Diageo’s Special Releases, which included seventeen annual Port Ellen editions between 2001 and 2017. After more than forty years without production, Diageo officially restarted distillation at Port Ellen in March 2024. The rebuilt facility incorporates two pairs of stills: the “Phoenix Stills”, designed to replicate the stills used before the 1983 closure, and the “Experimental Stills”, combined with a spirit safe designed to allow more precise separation of the different fractions of the spirit run. Bottlings drawn from historical stocks therefore originate exclusively from spirit distilled up to 1983, while production resumed in 2024 represents a distinct new period in the chronology of Port Ellen.
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