The Orphan Barrel brand was devised by Diageo in 2013. The company's previous iteration - United Distillers - had been very active in the American whiskey market in the 1980s, however when they became Diageo in 1997 the focus of the company shifted elsewhere. The result was the offloading in 1999 of what are now several prize assets, including the Bernheim distillery to Heaven Hill along with the Old Fitzgerald brand, and the Weller brand to the Sazerac Company. Further to this, believing bourbon to be past its best beyond the age of 12 years, it offloaded huge quantities of stock from the legendary Stitzel-Weller distillery, much of which was bottled by what are now hugely sought after independent labels like Very Olde St Nick, Jefferson's Reserve and Pappy Van Winkle.
Having given up a cache of whiskey now bottled as a veritable who's who of collectible bourbon brands, it is hardly surprising that the company were keen to reinvest in the booming American whiskey industry of the 2000s. The Orphan Barrel series was intended to tap into that same collectors market. It was bottled using the stock retained from their former distillery portfolio across the US, which in the late 1980s and early 1990s had consolidated the empires of two of the biggest post-Prohibition distillers in Schenley and Seagram.
Later examples of the brand strayed somewhat from the original concept however, and included whiskies from current Diageo distilling outfits such as Cascade Hollow in Tennessee and the Crown Royal distillery in Canada. In an effort to remain true to the "orphan" barrel premise, the first Scotch whiskies were introduced to the portfolio in 2019. The first of these was a single malt from Pittyvaich, followed by a single grain from Port Dundas.
