Vat 69

For the special forces unit, see VAT 69 Commando.

Vat 69 is a blended Scotch whisky produced by Diageo in Scotland. It was created by William Sanderson & Son Limited of South Queensferry, Scotland.

Vat 69

A bottle of Vat 69 whisky.
Type	Blended Scotch whisky
Manufacturer	Diageo
Country of origin	Scotland
Introduced	1882
Alcohol by volume	40%

History

William Sanderson was born in Leith, Scotland on 27 January 1839. He 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.

The characteristic Vat 69 bottle with its bulbous neck was introduced to the market and was not changed for the next hundred years. 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, and this 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

Vat 69 production in 1972.

Despite its name, it is not a vatted malt, but a blend of about 40 malt and grain whiskies. Vat 69 Reserve carries no standard age statement.

Media appearances

Enjoyed by General Frank Savage (played by Gregory Peck) in Twelve O'Clock High, a 1949 WWII film about the US Air Force in England 1943.

Vat 69 was the beverage of choice in the Preston household (Bette Davis and Gary Merrill) and also the mode of delivery for the titular poison in Another Man's Poison (1951).

Captain Lewis Nixon, an American World War II army officer who is a major figure in the 1992 non-fiction book Band of Brothers by Stephen E. Ambrose and the award-winning 2001 HBO miniseries made from it, is portrayed as an enthusiastic drinker who went to great lengths to obtain supplies of Vat 69.

Dan Turner, Hollywood Detective, a fictional character created by pulp magazine, radio and TV writer Robert Leslie Bellem, kept a ready supply of Vat 69 in his apartment, and had remarkably good luck finding a bottle at most of the murder scenes he investigated.

In The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, Ellen Barkin character Penny Priddy says "I guess I just soaked up a bit too much Vat 69 here." while clutching the bottle and crying at a cocktail table.

In a Dirty Harry scene where crooks are held up in a store and "request" a car, Harry decides to give them one. Upon exiting the car once inside, on a wall can be seen, "VAT 69 Gold" appearing on a yellow sign in a stencil font.

Towards the end of the final episode of The Field of Blood (TV series), three journalists are seen sharing a bottle of Vat 69 in their newspaper office.

A bottle of VAT 69 can be seen during a scene in "Women Haters"(1934), the first short by The Three Stooges during their time working for Columbia Pictures.

Jason Taverner buys a fifth of Vat 69 in Philip K. Dick’s novel, Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said.

In a scene of the 1976 Italian movie Febbre da cavallo, one of the main characters is involved in recording a spot for the Vat 69, despite his inability to remember the proper line.

It was an old joke that "Vat 69" was the pope's phone number (ie Vatican extension 69).

In the 1959 film Our Man In Havana, protagonist Jim Wormold is asked to identify the body of his friend Dr Hasselbacher, lying prone on a bar floor holding a Vat 69 miniature, presumed intended as a gift for Jim's collection.

Actors Frankie Miller (Jake McQuillen) and Ken Hutchison (Dancer Dunnichy) can be seen swigging from a bottle of VAT 69 when the latter turns up at the former's workplace to drag him away for a drink in Peter McDougall's acclaimed BBC Play for Today drama Just A Boys' Game (1979).