Glenallachie 2011-2021 - 10 Year Old - Duncan Taylor Octave - Single Cask 3033109 - UK Exclusive

Glenallachie is a modern whisky distillery, built in 1967, and until recently was a relatively obscure Speyside workhorse making high quality spirit for former owner Pernod Ricard’s blended whiskies. That all changed in 2017, when Glenallachie was purchased by a consortium headed by Billy Walker following the sale to Brown-Forman of his revived Benriach, Glenglassaugh and Glendronach distilleries. 

Since the takeover, Glenallachie has been revealed to be another hidden gem, and now has a core range of high quality aged expressions, complemented by superb small batch and single cask prestige bottlings. Glenallachie’s spirit is muscular and suited both to sherry casks and long ageing, making the distillery an ideal candidate for Mr Walker’s magic touch. Older official bottlings of Glenallachie turn up sometimes at auction - the best value are the cask strength sherried editions released by Pernod Ricard around 2005-2008.

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.