Glen Spey 1976 - 29 Year Old - First Cask - Single Cask 1061

One of Diageo’s smallest and most obscure distilleries, Glen Spey was built in Rothes in 1878. The distillery was soon acquired by W & A Gilbey (more famous for their gin), who merged into International Distillers and Vintners in 1962. IDV subsequently became part of Grand Metropolitan, which merged with Guinness to become Diageo in 1997.

Glen Spey has been supplying the J&B blend since the days of IDV, and official bottlings are extremely scarce. An official 8-year-old was bottled in the 1980s during the GrandMet era, but this was the first and only OB until the Flora & Fauna 12-year-old appeared from Diageo in 2001, since which there have been only a couple of single cask bottlings and one Special Release in 2010. Independent bottlings of Glen Spey are easy to find, with highly rated 1970s vintages by First Cask, Jack Weiber and Dewar Rattray among others.

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.