Cambus 1983-2011 - 27 Year Old - Dead Whisky Society - Single Cask 701513

Cambus was founded around 1806, originally as a malt whisky distillery, but was switched to grain whisky production from the 1830s onwards. Cambus distillery was one of the original founders of the Distillers Company Ltd (DCL) in 1877, becoming a key pawn in the legal battles between malt and grain distillers early in the 20th century, when DCL released a seven-year-old Cambus grain whisky with the slogan ‘Not A Headache In A Gallon’.

After a catastrophic fire in 1914 Cambus fell silent for over two decades, but was rebuilt in 1937. The distillery was enlarged in the 1950s to encompass gin production and later became a key site for the processing of CO2 and other distillation by-products. Sadly, Cambus later fell victim to the whisky crisis and subsequent consolidations of the 1980s, and was closed by DCL successor United Distillers in 1993.

Independent bottler Dead Whisky Society was founded by Scottish entrepreneur Laura Greig Conway in 2003. The company released only six whiskies in their short history, beginning in 2003 with a 1975 Dallas Dhu and ending with a Cambus 1983 and Caledonian 1976 that appeared in spring 2011. In between came a trio of Banff vintage casks released between 2006-2008. 

Nevertheless, Dead Whisky Society is known to most whisky fans thanks to the extraordinary quality of each of the six whiskies it released. The company’s concept was to bottle great whiskies from Scotland’s lost distilleries, and by that criterion they succeeded - the Banff 1971 and the two grain whiskies are recognised as some of the finest expressions from their respective distilleries ever bottled.