Speyside > Glenfiddich

The Glenfiddich distillery was founded in 1886 by William Grant using second-hand equipment, which he purchased at a bargain price. The very first Glenfiddich Whisky was produced on Christmas Day 1887. As a small family run business Glenfiddich faced intense competition from the bigger name distilleries during the economic boom years that followed the Second World War. It was the belief of the whisky business at the time was that single malts were far too intense in palate for the English and other foreigners. But in 1963 the Grant family decided to go against this belief and market its whisky seriously as a single malt outside of Scotland. For many years afterwards companies in the industry regarded this move as foolishness. The vision and persistence of the Grant family was very single-minded. Few of its rivals would have been bold enough at the time to offer their whisky as bottled single malts. So if you are a devotee of single malts you owe a huge debt of gratitude to Glenfiddich and the Grant family. This head start in the worldwide single malt market laid the foundations for the success of Glenfiddich. The fact that Glenfiddich single malt is one of the less challenging malts to the palate undoubtedly also helped a great deal. Today, Glenfiddich is still owned by the Grant family and is sadly one of only a few Scotch whisky distillers to remain in family hands. Glenfiddich is the biggest selling single malt whisky in the world in fact one in every five bottles of single malt whisky sold in the world today is a bottle of Glenfiddich.

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