IMPERIAL DISTILLERY Calvados Wood Gordon & MacPhail 1990

In 1895, James Gordon and John Alexander MacPhail established a grocery and wine merchant business in South Street, Elgin. Within a year of the firm’s establishment, John Urquhart joined the company.

Urquhart became a senior partner in 1915 and began to develop the firm’s whisky broking business, also bottling single malts under licence for several famous distilleries, including The Glenlivet. Additionally, he had casks of new-make spirit laid down at a number of Speyside distilleries, with the intention of using them for blending or for bottling as single malts.

It was always the ambition of John Urquhart and subsequent generations of the Urquhart family that one day Gordon & MacPhail would own and manage a distillery of its own.  This came to fruition in 1993 when the company purchased Benromach in Forres from United Distillers.

The distillery was entirely re-equipped before being officially opened by HRH Prince Charles in 1998 and a range of Benromach single malt expressions was subsequently introduced, now making up an important element of the Gordon & MacPhail business.