William Sanderson started an apprenticeship with wine and
spirituous liquors producer Matthew Buchan at the age of 13. By 1863, he already owned his own business producing liqueurs and
whisky blends. In 1880, his son William Mark joined the business and persuaded his father to bottle various blends of whisky. In 1882, William Sanderson prepared one hundred
casks of
blended whisky and hired a panel of experts to taste them. The batch from the cask (or “vat”) with number 69 was judged to be the best, which provided the whisky's brand name. The whisky was at first bottled in
port bottles. In 1884, Sanderson bought the
Glen Garioch distillery which was situated in the middle of a
barley field. The
distillery was meant to ensure the delivery of grain whisky. Sanderson took care that there were always new products to be blended, because
DCL, which was a strong society at that time, controlled such a large amount of the production that it had a huge influence on the supply of the competing company. For this reason Sanderson, together with Usher and Bell, founded a company to produce
grain whisky, which still exists today as the
North British Distillery. Sanderson sourced a few
malt whiskies used to blend Vat 69 from a friend, John Begg, who owned the
Royal Lochnagar distillery. When Begg died, Sanderson became director of Begg's distillery. In 1933, Sanderson's company merged with Booth's Distilleries, which merged again with the DCL group in 1935. In autumn 1980, "Vat 69 Reserve" from the House of Sanderson had its world première in England. ==Blend==