Scotland, Northern Highlands. Distillery operational. Owner: Diageo

Founded in 1967 on the site of its renowned colleague Clynelish #1 (renamed Brora in 1969), from which it takes its name, Clynelish began production in June 1968. At the cutting edge of technology, it tripled Brora's production capacity. Like Caol Ila, its peaty alter ego from Islay, the majority of its production was at the time fated to be absorbed by the blend Johnnie Walker. It would not be until 1994 that the first official versions would be released in the Rare Malts Selection for its vintage versions with high ABVs (Clynelish 1972, 23 Year Old, 63%), then in the Flora & Fauna range (Clynelish 14 Year Old, 43%), and finally in the Flora & Fauna Cask Strength range launched in 1997, which introduced a 1982 vintage.Niche and rare in the 80s and 90s, Clynelish was brought into the spotlight by independent bottlers (Gordon & MacPhail, Cadenhead, Signatory Vintage) who took the single malt in hand, offering numerous vintage and aged small batch and single cask versions, such as Clynelish 12 Year Old Orange Label Gordon & MacPhail, Clynelish 28 Year old 1971 Signatory Vintage and Clynelish 1972 Cask Strength Cadenhead.

A Clynelish distilled in 1997 and bottled in 2014 by Gordon & MacPhail for the Connoisseurs Choice collection after ageing in refill American hogsheads. Gordon & MacPhail is one of Scotland’’s oldest independent bottlers. It was founded in Elgin in 1895 by James Gordon and John Alexander MacPhail. As was often the case at the time, the business started out as a delicatessen and wine merchant. 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 sadly died in a car crash. Gordon & MacPhail works with many of Speyside’’s leading distilleries, from whom it has accumulated considerable stocks. It is also licensed to bottle whiskies for many of them, including Glen Grant, Linkwood, Mortlach, Macallan and Glenlivet. The business really took off in the 1970s, acquiring distributors in a huge range of countries and selling casks to several Italian bottlers in selections that would become legends in their own right. Gordon & MacPhail is still run by the Urquhart family today, from the same building, and is one of the most iconic bottlers in the industry, with incredible stocks of sometimes very old and rare whiskies. The company is in complete control of the entire maturation process. Gordon & MacPhail has also owned the Benromach distillery since 1993. The Connoisseurs Choice range is one of Gordon & MacPhail’’s spearhead collections. Created for the Italian collector and importer Edoardo Giaccone in the early 1970s, it became part of the permanent range in 1979 and has remained so ever since, despite changing greatly, from red and black labels to map labels and today’’s design, as well as the gradient label. Older editions were bottled at 40% and coloured artificially. Today, the whiskies in the range display their natural colouring and are often cask strength.