The Whisky Connoisseur was an independent bottler of top class single malt whiskies founded by Arthur J. A. Bell and his wife Susan. In the early 1990s The Whisky Connoisseur began releasing a string of superb single cask and small batch single malt whiskies. Many of these were ‘mystery’ single malts bottled without naming their distilleries of origin on the labels, using proprietary pseudonyms instead.

Some of these mystery single malts, in particular the extraordinary Bowmores bottled as Largiemeanoch and the stunning Balmenach released as Miltonhaugh, have gone on to earn legendary status among whisky fans. 

The Whisky Connoisseur released over 250 whiskies over the course of the 1990s and 2000s, with the final bottlings coming around the end of 2011. In no small part due to the relative anonymity conferred by the pseudonyms, recognition was slow in coming for some of these whiskies, and many have remained hidden treasures. The vast majority of The Whisky Connoisseur's malts were bottled before widespread internet adoption, and to this day a great many of these superb casks are still relatively unknown and often offer fantastic value on the secondary market.