James Gordon and John Alexander MacPhail opened a grocery store with superior items at a fair price in 1895, resulting in high customer satisfaction. The 15-year-old help, John Urquhart, helped buy barrels of whisky from local distilleries and began specialising in bottling Whiskies for distilleries such as Macallan, Glenlivet, Glen Grant, Linkwood and Mortlach. This whisky from the Balblair distillery matured for 10 years on American oak Hogsheads.
