An Aberdeen shop, two brothers and a Royal Warrant.

Chivas Regal is a blended Scotch, and its story begins in a shop rather than a distillery. In 1801 John Forrest opened a grocery and wine merchant’s at 47 Castle Street in Aberdeen, according to the brand history published by ScotchWhisky.com; in 1828 the shop was bought by William Edward. James Chivas, who had come to Aberdeen from a farm in the Ellon parish of Aberdeenshire, joined the business in 1838.

The business moved through several partnerships. From 1841 James Chivas ran it with another grocer, Charles Stewart, as Stewart & Chivas, and in 1843 the firm was granted a Royal Warrant by Queen Victoria, ScotchWhisky.com says. In 1857 the partnership was dissolved and James was joined by his brother John, and the firm became Chivas Brothers. F. Paul Pacult’s 2011 book A Double Scotch, as cited by English Wikipedia, dates the firm’s first house blend, Royal Glen Dee, to 1854 and a second, Royal Strathythan, to 1863, after an 1853 law allowed whiskies to be vatted in bond.

The Chivas family’s part in the firm ended in the late nineteenth century. In 1886 the business passed to James’s eldest son, Alexander, and after 1893 it was run by employees under the Chivas Brothers name, ScotchWhisky.com says. From 1895 Alexander Smith took control in partnership with Charles Stewart Howard, who placed greater weight on whisky. According to Pacult, as cited by English Wikipedia, the buyout came with a condition that the company keep the Chivas Brothers name.

A 25-year-old for America, then a 12.

By 1900 Chivas Brothers had about six blends on its books, ScotchWhisky.com says, including Royal Glen Dee, Royal Strathythan and Royal Loch Nevis. Hearing that the economies of the United States and Canada were booming, Howard launched a new blend in 1909: Chivas Regal, a 25-year-old. ScotchWhisky.com calls it the world’s first luxury blended whisky, a claim Chivas Brothers also makes in its own brand material. Exports were strong for five years, until the outbreak of war in 1914 cut the shipping routes to America and the firm turned to its home market.

Ownership changed twice in the next fifteen years. In early 1936 the remaining partner sold Chivas Brothers to the whisky brokers Stanley P. Morrison and R. D. Lundie, who rebuilt its stocks. With the Second World War beginning in 1939, they relaunched Chivas Regal in the United States as a 12-year-old to preserve their reserves, ScotchWhisky.com says. The 12-year-old is still the flagship expression, ScotchWhisky.com says. In 1949 the company was sold to Seagram, the Canadian group run by Samuel Bronfman, and in 1950 it bought the Milton distillery in Keith and renamed it Strathisla.

Strathisla remains the blend’s home. Chivas Brothers says the distillery dates from 1786 and is the oldest working distillery in the Scottish Highlands, and English Wikipedia, citing the company, calls its malt the core malt in every Chivas Regal blend. English Wikipedia also names Longmorn, The Glenlivet, Allt-a-Bhainne, Miltonduff and Braeval, with grain whisky from Strathclyde in the Lowlands.

Under Seagram the range grew. A Chivas Regal 18 was introduced in 1997 as a step between the 12 and older blends, and four years later the brand went to Pernod Ricard during the sell-off of Seagram’s drinks business in 2001, ScotchWhisky.com says. Chivas Brothers is now Pernod Ricard’s Scotch whisky arm, with its head office in Dumbarton, according to English Wikipedia. A new Chivas Regal 25, presented as a tribute to the 1909 original, followed in 2007, Drinks Media Wire reported.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all whisky names from Ireland and Scotland: Bushmills, Tullamore D.E.W., Glenfiddich, The Glenlivet, The Macallan, Chivas Regal and The Famous Grouse. Irish and Scotch whisky brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from names that still carry a founder’s or a place’s name to names that now belong to much larger drinks groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a local bar to an airport shop.

A whisky brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single bottle than by a label, a name and the place it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its production or grown far beyond the place where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its whisky is actually made and bottled.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its whisky is made and how its packaging has changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Emblems, bottles and collaborations.

Chivas Regal’s pack carries two emblems. In October 2024, reporting on a new bottle for Chivas Regal 18, The Spirits Business described the Luckenbooth, a traditional Scottish symbol, at the centre of the label and embossed in the glass base, and the brand’s classic shield and crossed spears emblem, also embossed in the glass, which the magazine said reflects the partnership of the founding brothers. The new bottle was about a quarter lighter than its predecessor, taller and with rounded shoulders, and carried master blender Sandy Hyslop’s signature in gold.

That was the second recent redesign of the 18. In May 2018 the expression received a new label and box in a new shade of blue with a textured finish, launched with a global campaign about the “skill and time” behind the whisky, The Spirits Business reported; the blend itself had been created by the former master blender Colin Scott.

Other expressions have widened the range. Chivas Regal Mizunara, partly matured in Japanese oak, was launched in Japan in 2013, ScotchWhisky.com says, and reached the United States in January 2019, Forbes reported. The Icon, a blend of whiskies aged at least 25 years, appeared in 2015 in a hand-blown green-glass decanter by Dartington Crystal, GQ reported, and the XV, finished in casks that had held Grande Champagne Cognac, followed in 2018.

Sport and fashion have carried the brand’s recent marketing. Chivas Regal signed a three-year sponsorship with Manchester United in August 2018, ScotchWhisky.com reported, and in 2024 it became an official team partner of Scuderia Ferrari HP, naming the driver Charles Leclerc a global brand ambassador in March 2025, The Drinks Business reported. Its “I Rise, We Rise” campaign produced limited-edition bottles with Blackpink’s Lisa in 2022 and the rapper Stefflon Don in 2023, and in October 2025 the Indian couturier Gaurav Gupta designed limited-edition bottles for the 12 and the XV, Forbes reported. Our note on the Chivas Regal font covers its lettering.

For a design guide, Chivas Regal shows how a grocer’s Royal Warrant, a pair of founding brothers and a heraldic emblem can carry a blended Scotch from Aberdeen to a global market. Compare The Glenlivet, the Speyside single malt that Chivas Brothers also owns, and The Famous Grouse, another blended Scotch. For this guide we use a regal navy, a silver and an amber with an engraved capitals serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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