William Sanderson was born in Leith, Scotland on 27 January 1839.[3] He started an apprenticeship with wine and spirituous liquors producer Matthew Buchan at the age of 13.[4] 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.[5]
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.[6] 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.
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).
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 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).
^Winters, Dick & Kingseed, Cole C. (2006). Beyond Band of Brothers: The War Memoirs of Major Dick Winters. New York City: Berkley Caliber. pp. 275–277. ISBN978-0-425-20813-7.
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