Scotland, Campbeltown. Distillery operational. Owner: J&A Mitchell & Co Ltd

It is no coincidence that four of the fifteen most prized distilleries in Scotland are family-owned or independent. Throughout the 20th century, this status led them to seize on any commercial opportunity open to them and to develop the marketing ingenuity key to the development and sustainability of their businesses. The Springbank distillery is one of the finest examples of the villainy of the Scotch whisky industry in the 20th century.This is seen in two exceptional bottlings, one distributed in the early 70s, a 50 year old distilled on 29 December 1919 (stated on its certificate), and the other released in the early 90s, a re-bottling from the distiller, limited to 24 editions worldwide, also displaying the vintage 1919. It is also seen in a move made at the very start of the 2000s, when, under pressure from a stock hit hard by years of production crisis (1980s), the Mitchell family decided to drastically change the profile of their single malt, taking the opportunity to change the bottle at the same time.

A Springbank distilled in 1989 and bottled with neither chill filtration nor artificial colouring by Murray McDavid to commemorate the naming ceremony on 28 August 1999 for the “Ernest & Mary Shaw”, the Campbeltown RNLB from the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), the replacement for the “Walter & Margaret Couper”. For every bottle sold, £10 was donated to the RNLI. The label was designed by John Stewart of the Oystercatcher Gallery in Campbeltown. Murray McDavid is an independent bottler founded in 1996 by Mark Reynier, Simon Coughlin and Gordon Wright, the former director of Springbank. They specialized in ageing whiskies in unusual casks, particularly wine casks, adding the term “ACE-ing” to their labels, standing for “additional cask enhancement”. Having been bought by the Rémy Cointreau group at the same time as the Bruichladdich distillery that had been reopened by Murray McDavid in 2000, it is now owned by the broker Aceo Ltd and continues to operate from the former Coleburn distillery in Speyside, whose warehouses it uses.