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 12 Year Old distilled in 1994 and bottled in 2006 by Whisky Galore, a subsidiary of Duncan Taylor. Duncan Taylor was originally a cask broker founded in Glasgow in 1938. The company moved into independent bottling in 2001 after it was bought by Euan Shand, a former employee of Glendronach, who moved the company to Huntly, Aberdeen, and made the most of the many casks available to it.