Kinclaith 1969-2004 - 35 Year Old - Duncan Taylor - Rarest Of The Rare - Single Cask 301455

Kinclaith distillery came to life in 1957, when two pot stills were installed at the Strathclyde grain distillery in Glasgow. Kinclaith’s Lowland single malt whisky was made for owner Seager Evans’ blended whiskies, most notably Long John, but the distillery was dismantled in 1975 by new owners Whitbread to accommodate an expansion of Strathcyde’s grain whisky capacity.

Kinclaith was never officially bottled, but independent bottlings by Cadenhead’s and Gordon & MacPhail began in the late 1970s and early 1980s. More recently some 1969 and 1975 Kinclaiths were bottled by Signatory and Duncan Taylor, but the last of these appeared in 2020, so it seems possible that the last cask has been bottled. Kinclaith’s quality was generally surprisingly high and its rarity means that this is one of the most valuable ‘unicorn’ malts at auction.

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.