Crabbie 1988-2019 - 30 Year Old - Single Cask

The grandest of Speyside’s blue chip distilleries, Macallan was founded in 1824 and carved a reputation for luxury single malt whisky in the 1980s with string of 18-year-old and 25-year-old sherry-matured vintage single malts distilled in the 1960s and 1970s, building on the renown of earlier highly-regarded licensed bottlings by Gordon & MacPhail and Campbell, Hope and King.

In the early 2000s, as the supply and quality of even the best sherry casks declined dramatically, Macallan introduced their Fine Oak series, an initially controversial range of bottlings that included bourbon-matured spirit in the cask recipe. While the Fine Oak series took some time to find its audience, Macallan’s status as the top Speyside distillery - particularly at auction - was already well-established and today a legion of eager Macallan fans ensure that each new luxury bottling from the distillery sells out immediately on release.

John Crabbie grew up in his father's Edinburgh grocery before starting his own drinks business in 1832. Crabbie acquired extensive premises in Leith in 1836, and soon afterwards created the company’s most famous product: Crabbie’s Green Ginger Wine, the first records of which go back to 1839. By the 1860s John Crabbie was one of Scotland's major whisky blenders and in 1885 he co-founded the North British grain distillery, serving as its first chairman.

Distillers Company Ltd bought John Crabbie & Co. in 1963, before selling it on to Glenmorangie owners Macdonald and Muir in the 1980s. Halewood International bought the Crabbie brand in 2007 and subsequently introduced the popular Crabbie’s Alcoholic Ginger Beer as well as bottling some excellent sourced single malts whiskies under the Crabbie name. In 2020, John Crabbie & Co. opened their Bonnington distillery in Leith, not far from the company's 19th century home.