Scotland, Speyside. Distillery closed. Owner: Pernod Ricard.

Founded in 1897 by Thomas Mackenzie (owner of Dailuaine-Talisker Distilleries Ltd) to provide relief to its close neighbour Dailuaine, Imperial was in production for only a few months from the summer of 1898, before closing in 1899. In the space of just one century, the distillery was closed more often than it was in production. Its malt would be used in leading blends such as Teachers, Long John, Old Smuggler and Ballantine's, leaving little room to develop a range of single malts. Only Allied Distillers, which became the owner in 1989, would offer a 15 year old version in its Special Distillery Bottling range. For the rest, one would need to dig through the stocks of independent bottlers, and yet here also they are generally rare. Imperial is definitively an endangered malt.

An Imperial single cask (#4969) distilled in 1997 and bottled in 2010 by Gordon & MacPhail, one of Scotland’’s oldest independent bottlers. Gordon & MacPhail 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 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 whiskies.