Glen Grant 1967 Averys for Corti Brothers 10 Year Old / US Import

Averys of Bristol are a historic English wine-merchant and distributor, always famed for their forward-thinking outlook on wine and spirits. They were early champions of new world wines, and the first to import what are now recognised household names like Wolf Blass and Penfolds Grange. Similarly, they were also aheads of the curve with whisky, bottling single malts as early as the 1930s. There has been little output from the firm since the 1980s, but in their heydey they produced some incredibly sought after whisky and rum, including Macallan, Highland Park, and this elegantly labelled series for the Corti Brothers of Sacramento.

The Corti Brothers were a family grocer business founded in 1947 by Frank and Gino. Frank's son Darrell was the one to introduce a specialist spirits knowledge to the business, and they began getting their own Scotch whisky bottled for them in 1978.

This whisky was distilled in 1967 and bottled from two casks in the Summer of 1978.

Glen Grant is one of Speyside's most recognised distilleries. It was built in 1839 by James and John Grant, and was a huge facility for its time. Its size increased exponentially over time, in the hands of John's son, John "The Major" Grant (who also built the short-lived Caperdonich next-door), and twice in the 1970s following the merger with The Glenlivet Distillers and its subsequent takeover by Seagram. Glen Grant was bottled as a single malt as early as the late-19th century, and developed a global export market. None perhaps as important as in Italy, where their agent in the 1960s, Armando Giovinetti, turned it into the nation's favourite whisky, after discovering the palate preferences of his countrymen for very young single malts. So loved is Glen Grant in Italy, that the distillery is now owned by Gruppo Campari, who bought it from Pernod Ricard in 2006.