Glenlivet 1959-1990 - 31 Year Old - Duthies - Sherry Cask

One of Scotland’s iconic distilleries, Glenlivet is currently the joint largest single malt whisky distillery in Scotland at 21m litres per annum. The distillery was expanded in 2010, raising the number of stills to fourteen, before the construction of a third stillhouse in 2018 brought the total number of stills to 28. Having achieved production parity with Glenfiddich, Glenlivet is now catching their rival in sales terms as well and may soon become the biggest-selling single malt whisky in the world. 

Glenlivet has rarely been independently bottled, but the official releases are sufficiently plentiful and diverse that this isn’t an issue. Glenlivet ages well in both bourbon and sherry casks, and a raft of official releases at various strengths, ages and cask types are available to satisfy the pickiest whisky buyers. At auction the old 1950s and 1960s vintages bottled for the Cellar Collection are always worth looking out for.

R.W. Duthie & Co. was an export label for the Scotch whisky independent bottler W.M. Cadenhead’s of Aberdeen. The Duthie subsidiary brand was named after William Cadenhead’s nephew Robert Duthie, who inherited the Aberdeen shop in 1904 and ran the company until his death in 1931, greatly expanding the whisky side of the business in the process.

Although the relationship was not exclusive, today the Duthie label is primarily associated with its most auspicious collaborator, the Italian importer and bottler Silvano Samaroli. The two companies were to release hundreds of extraordinary quality single cask and small batch single malt whiskies throughout the 1980s and 1990s, with the famous Flowers series in 1981 followed by the legendary Bouquet bottlings in 1984 and rdozens of magnificent whiskies including the Fragments of Scotland and Ageing Monography series.