The legendary Manager's Drams whiskies originated in 1987, when a group of distillery managers from Scottish Malt Distillers (SMD) met for a tasting session, with each manager bringing a sample of their favourite cask from their respective distilleries. As there were nearly thirty managers in attendance, the session was no doubt long and arduous, but the outcome was deemed worthy of the effort: in early 1988, the winner of that session - a 15-year-old Glen Elgin sherry cask that weighed in at a hefty 60.2% - became the first Manager’s Dram bottling.

The Manager’s Dram whiskies were never for sale to the general public - instead they were a perk for the staff of SMD and its parents and successors United Distillers and Diageo. The bottles were sold to staff (and occasionally gifted to VIPs) on condition that they could not be resold until after the employee had left the company. Predictably, the interest and demand from whisky fans for these staff-only cask strength bottlings was sky-high as soon as their existence became known, and any bottles that came to the secondary market were immediately snapped up by collectors.

The success of the first Manager’s Dram edition was such that another cask was selected and bottled before the end of 1988. Thereafter, two bottles appeared each year until 1992 when the Manager’s Dram became a single annual release. Sadly the legendary Manager’s Dram tasting sessions are now long-discontinued, but the series remains an ongoing project and is still coming up with some terrific small batch whiskies, while the most famous historic bottlings now change hands at auction for prices in the thousands.