Macallan is to Scottish single malts what Petrus is to French grand crus - a monument! To this day, no other distillery has sold a single edition at such a high auction price as The Macallan 60 Year Old 1926 Dillon, which fetched £1.2 million in 2018.Macallan owes this renown to the excellence of its production methods and its sherry-cask maturation, as well as the business acumen of its owners who, in the early 20th century, set out to conquer numerous markets, and the aptness of their vision of the distillery and its single malt, which they recognized as being akin to a château and grand cru. This led to the whisky adopting practices from the world of wine, including vintage bottlings for all versions aged 15 years and older, with the help up until the late 1960s of companies such as Campbell, Hope & King and Gordon & MacPhail, who bottled and distributed the malt on The Macallan's behalf. The 1990s saw the appearance of elegant 25 and 30 year olds, including those presented in the Tudor Crystal Decanters range, presaging the change in direction The Macallan would take in the new millennium. In 1999, an outstanding copper-adorned curved crystal decanter was released for a 50 Year Old edition distilled in 1949.

A Macallan 1973 bottled in 2015 for Gordon & MacPhail’’s Speymalt range. Gordon & MacPhail supported Macallan in the 1930s and 1940s by buying a large quantity of whisky, a practice it continued after this difficult period. Gordon & MacPhail is one of the oldest independent bottlers in Scotland. It was founded in Elgin in 1895 by James Gordon and John Alexander MacPhail. As was often the case at the time, it was a delicatessen and wine retailer. In 1915, John Alexander MacPhail retired and a new partner joined the business, John Urquhart. He was joined by his son George in 1933, a few years after James Gordon’’s death in a car accident. The company worked with many major Speyside distilleries, for which it created considerable stocks. It was also licensed to bottle the whiskies of many of these distilleries, including Glen Grant, Linkwood, Mortlach, Macallan and Glenlivet. Business was booming in the 1970s, with distributers in several countries and the sale of casks to many Italian bottlers; its selections became legendary. Today, Gordon & MacPhail is still directed by the Urquhart family, in the original building, and is one of the most iconic bottlers in the industry, with vast stocks of often very old whiskies that are difficult to find elsewhere. Gordon & MacPhail controls maturation from start to finish. Some collections, like the famous Connoisseur’’s Choice, have become cult references over the years. Gordon & MacPhail has also owned the Benromach distillery since 1993.