Gordon and MacPhail Call for Stability Ahead of Budget: Speyside Firm Reports Mixed Performance and Major Investments

Published November 20, 2025 by John Fegan

Gordon and MacPhail is one of those rare Scottish institutions that has survived wars, recessions and the occasional whisky fad that spread after too many people read the same lifestyle blog. Even so, the independant bottler has found itself glancing nervously toward the upcoming Budget, hoping that the Chancellor resists any sudden impulses that would make selling good whisky even more chaotic than a night out in Glasgow when the football goes sideways.

Mark Geary is freshly in the big chair and has already perfected the expression and politely exhausted demeanour of a man who has explained tariff fallout so often that he is beginning to suspect he might be part of a cosmic joke. What Geary wants is Westminster to deliver something truly radical we’ve not seen much over the last decade or so, stability. A structure that encourages growth. A reassuring sense of continuity. And ideally nothing that forces him to update export projections while maintaining precarious gymnastics.

This appeal follows a year that accountants would label mixed with the same careful neutrality they reserve for awkward spreadsheets. Whisky drinkers, meanwhile, might choose the word intriguing, which is usually deployed when something looks like it could either be brilliant or explode. Sales dropped to 28.2 million pounds, down from 34.4 million the previous year and 46.5 million the year before that. Yet pre-tax profit rose to 6.8 million pounds, which proves that a business can stagger in one column of the ledger while strutting like it owns the place in another.

The rise in profit came courtesy of a more favourable sales mix, meticulous cost control and an insurance payment related to production at The Cairn distillery being halted by severe weather. Severe weather in Scotland is an impressively flexible concept, covering anything from horizontal rain to minor meteorological melodrama.

The company also invested handsomely during the year, which in business terms means buying things that look terribly sensible on a spreadsheet. This included a new warehouse for Benromach and an enthusiastic burst of brand activity. Their most attention grabbing achievement was the release of Artistry in Oak, an 85 year old single malt drawn from spirit distilled in 1940. The whisky is so old it predates many modern inconveniences and all 125 bottles have already found owners who presumably are more interested in possessing a legend than consuming one.

Geary noted positive growth in export markets such as South Korea and the United Arab Emirates, while observing that tariffs generally behave like trolls under the trade bridge, they growl, discouraging travel and demand lengthy negotiations before letting anyone pass. They dampen demand, bend markets into improbable shapes and compel brands to toil heroically simply to remain stationary.

Still, Gordon and MacPhail retains one advantage that many competitors envy. It is independently owned by a family with a long term perspective and an apparently inexhaustible supply of optimism that appears to refill itself whenever no one is looking. This outlook has carried the company from its origins as an Elgin grocery store in 1895 to its present role as a respected international bottler, retailer and distillery operator.

As the Budget creeps ever closer, the company waits and hopes for a calm and sensible decision from the government. After all, crafting a whisky of distinction takes decades, while fiscal inventiveness can make life interesting in entirely the wrong way with remarkable efficiency.