Dallas Dhu 1981-2008 - 27 Year Old - Duncan Taylor - Rare Auld - Single Cask 428

Speyside distillery Dallas Dhu began production in 1899 and was acquired by Diageo forerunner DCL in 1929. The distillery suffered a serious fire in 1939 but was rebuilt and subsequently made malt whisky for blends from 1947 until its closure by DCL in 1983. Dallas Dhu was sold to Historic Scotland in 1986 and converted into a distillery museum - the equipment is still theoretically operational, but previous plans to resume whisky production have come to nothing.

No official bottlings of Dallas Dhu’s whisky appeared until the mid-1990s when a handful of superb Rare Malts Editions were released. Historic Scotland subsequently bottled a number of Dallas Dhu malt whiskies, including the last 1983 vintage cask ever filled at the distillery. Independent bottlings of Dallas Dhu single malt are becoming very scarce now; the best previous examples are from G&M, Signatory and Cadenhead’s.

Duncan Taylor was founded in 1938, originally as a cask broker. The Glasgow-based company was acquired in the 1960s by the American blender and entrepreneur Abe Rosenberg, who amassed a large stock of maturing casks. Following Rosenberg’s death in 1994 the Duncan Taylor business lay dormant until the early 2000s, when the trustees offered some casks to businessmen Euan Shand and Alan Gordon. 

Shand and Gordon were so impressed with Duncan Taylor’s stock that they bought the company in 2002 and began bottling some of Rosenberg’s best casks. A string of extraordinary bottlings of Longmorn, Macallan, Bowmore and Springbank were released under the now defunct Peerless range and today Duncan Taylor, with Shand in full control since 2006, is established as one of Scotland’s most interesting independent bottlers.