Glenury Royal 1966-1990 - 23 Year Old - Cadenhead Miniature

Glenury Royal was a high class Highland distillery in the portfolio of Diageo forerunners Scottish Malt Distillers, but fell victim to the whisky crisis of the 1980s and was closed in 1983. The distillery had been founded in 1825 by Captain Robert Barclay Allardyce, who achieved great fame in 1809 by walking 1000 miles in 1000 hours for a bet, and later acquired the ‘Royal’ suffix for his distillery from his friend King William IV.

Glenury was extensively modernised in the 1960s after Diageo forerunner DCL purchased the distillery in 1953. A sherry-influenced 12-year-old official bottling of Glenury Royal appeared in the 1970s under DCL’s subsidiary John Gillon & Co., but the famous bottlings now are the four superb Rare Malts editions that appeared 1995-1999 and the subsequent Diageo Special Releases, the best of which is the Glenury Royal 1968 36-year-old bottled in 2005.

In 1842 George Duncan established a wine merchant and distillery agency business in Aberdeen. Duncan was joined in the early 1850s by his brother-in-law William Cadenhead, who took over the business after Duncan’s death in 1858, changing the company’s name to Wm. Cadenhead. When Cadenhead died in 1904 the company passed to his nephew Robert Duthie, who developed the spirits side of the business.

Duthie died suddenly in 1931, and employee Ann Oliver was put in charge of Cadenhead’s. Sadly, Oliver’s tenure ended in financial difficulty and on her retirement in 1972 the business was forced to sell its entire inventory. Cadenhead’s was acquired soon afterwards by J & A Mitchell, proprietors of Springbank distillery, who relocated the business to Campbeltown. Cadenhead’s has flourished under Mitchell’s stewardship, releasing many legendary single malt bottlings in the 1980s and 1990s and now has outlets in Edinburgh and London as well as Campbeltown.