Gordon & MacPhail have been merchants and bottlers in Elgin since 1895, and no firm has done more to keep the output of Speyside distilleries visible across the decades. Their Discovery range, launched in 2021, is the house's accessible tier: three character strands — Bourbon, Sherry, and Smoky — each bottled at 43% with an age statement and a named distillery.
Glen Grant sits in Rothes and was founded in 1840 by the brothers John and James Grant. It is a tall-stilled distillery, famous for the purifiers fitted by Major James Grant in the late nineteenth century, which return heavier vapours to the pot and yield a notably clean, light spirit. That lightness has always made Glen Grant a favourite of Italian drinkers, who for decades took the lion's share of its output.
G&M's long relationship with Glen Grant predates most independent bottlings on the market; their warehouses in Elgin hold casks stretching back generations, and the firm owned the neighbouring Benromach from 1993. The Discovery Glen Grant leans on sherry wood to thicken the distillery's naturally slender frame, giving raisin and almond notes without masking the orchard-fruit character of the spirit. It is an honest, unfussy dram — the sort of bottling that rewards the drinker who wants to understand a distillery rather than chase novelty.
