George Smith, The Glenlivet's founder, didn't follow the lead of the illegal still owners. In 1824, he obtained a distiller's licence to become the first legal distiller in Glenlivet, Scotland. 50 years later, George finally won the exclusive right to call his whisky ‘THE Glenlivet', definitively marking it as the single malt that started it all. To this day, The Glenlivet remains the benchmark that all other Speyside single malts are measured against.