Glen Albyn 1974 - 26 Year Old - First Cask - Single Cask 1586

Glen Albyn is one of the Highland's lost malt whisky distilleries. The distillery was built in Inverness in 1844 but was closed by Diageo forerunner Distillers Company Ltd in 1983 during the whisky lake crisis, and was later demolished to make way for a supermarket. Glen Albyn had one pair of stills and used traditional worm tubs, making a very old school, austere ‘unsexy’ Highland single malt whisky, often with grassy, cereal and minerally notes. 

The only modern official bottling of Glen Albyn was a Rare Malts 1975 26-year-old from 2002, though there was a short-lived 10-year-old OB in the 1970s and some earlier 8-year-olds are known to exist. Indie bottlings have dried up in recent years, with a pair of Gordon & MacPhail single casks the sole new bottlings since 2012; if any more casks of Glen Albyn do still exist, it seems likely they are in G&M's famous Elgin warehouses.

The First Cask range was a prolific series of single malt whisky bottlings by the UK’s largest mail order wine company Direct Wines Ltd, owner of Laithwaite’s and The Sunday Times Wine Club. From the early 1990s until the mid-Noughties Direct Wines released dozens of outstanding single cask whiskies annually under the First Cask label, almost all of which were bottled at 46%.

These whiskies were not particularly highly sought-after on release, probably because they were only sold online through a wine club.  Back then, of course, it was not widely known that the casks had been sourced from Signatory Vintage, which would certainly have raised their profile among whisky fans. Nowadays, although still frequently excellent value at auction, the First Cask collection - which includes hundreds of long-aged whiskies from distilleries including Brora, Port Ellen, Ardbeg and Macallan - is finally getting the recognition it deserves.