With all the consolidation of Scotland’s distilleries (hell…the world’s distilleries) into never-ending corporate landscapes, it’s easy to forget that three of the biggest and most-famous producers are still family-owned: Glenfiddich, Balvenie, and Girvan. Not only are they owned by a family company, they’re owned by the same family that originally built them. They’ve never changed hands; they’ve never been traded to another portfolio. William Grant and his sons built the Glenfiddich distillery in 1886 and today the company is run by his great-great grandson Glenn Gordon.

That’s pretty special.

Albeit being a large, interconnected, incredibly wealthy family-run company, William Grant & Sons still has a number of the same perks one would expect from an independent. As long as you know one of the family members, you can get just about anything done in minutes, unlike the lengthy and often ridiculous bureaucratic paperwork that’s required at some of the other facilities. Since we know Kirsten Grant personally and are her guests here in the Highlands, a private tour of the largest distillery in Scotland is a piece of cake.

You want to visit Macallan? Good luck. Even for large customers of the brand, getting booked into a simple tour is a month-long process. By contrast, you want to pop some barrels at Balvenie and taste some old Sherry butts? No problem! That’s the advantage of a family-run company. Nothing will endear you to a brand or a business faster than having someone look after your needs personally; hence, part of why I’m a huge fan of both Glenfiddich and Balvenie. Granted (pun intended), their whiskies are excellent. But I’m a big believer in old school customer service, especially in our a cold, tech-driven era. No drinks company right now has better customer service and relationship skills than William Grant—starting right from the top.

No Scottish company feels more authentic either. Kirsten is as down-to-earth as they come, as is her family’s archivist and historical expert Andy Fairgrieve: a dreadlocked Highlander straight out of a movie set. I spent most of last night drinking whisky with this superb fellow at the Dowans Hotel in Aberlour, sampling drams from the Grant family’s private collection on hand. They could’ve chosen the world’s most boring and pedantic professor for that role, right? But they did not. They chose Andy.

They’ve got a pretty amazing selection of bottles at the Dowans, even if you leave out the private shelves that are owned by local businesses and club members.

You also don’t expect a company as large as William Grant to have anything on those club shelves other than standard high-end expressions, but again that’s not the case. They could’ve populated their selection with the basic 25 and 30 year old releases, but they did not. Instead, we get radical single barrel samples like this super-sherried, cask strength, heavily-peated Glenfiddich from 2003. Another bottle had no label, just a Post-It note that read “40 year old barrel sample.”

As someone who has worked almost exclusively with family-run businesses, I felt right at home with those kooky idiosyncrasies.

-David Driscoll