Littlemill 1990-2009 - 19 Year Old - Douglas Laing - Old & Rare Platinum Selection - Single Cask

Littlemill was a Lowland distillery that until its closure in 1992 was Scotland’s oldest distillery, having been founded around 1772. After switching from triple distillation in the 1930s, Littlemill operated with a single pair of hybrid pot/column stills, and for a time the experimental malts Dumbuck and Dunglass were produced alongside Littlemill’s standard spirit. 

After a hiatus in the 1980s, Littlemill closed permanently in 1992 when the owners went bankrupt. The distillery was subsequently sold to Glen Catrine, who relocated the hybrid stills to their Loch Lomond distillery in 1997 and continue to steward Littlemill’s remaining stocks, releasing some very impressive long-aged official bottlings in the last few years. There are also some excellent independent bottlings of Littlemill from the likes of Gordon & MacPhail and Cadenhead’s. 

Sadly, Littlemill’s remaining buildings were destroyed by arsonists in 2004, shortly after the site had been acquired by Newstead Properties, a housing developer.

Founded in the late 1940s by Fred Douglas Laing Sr, the Douglas Laing company spent decades as whisky blenders and exporters before Fred Laing’s sons Stewart and Fred Jr introduced the highly influential Old Malt Cask single malt range in 1998. The McGibbon’s Provenance and Old & Rare Platinum series followed soon afterwards, establishing Douglas Laing as one of Scotland’s finest independent bottlers.

In 2013 Stewart Laing left the business, taking Old Malt Cask and Old & Rare to his new company Hunter Laing, while Fred Laing Jr was joined by his daughter Cara and her husband Chris Leggatt from Morrison Bowmore. The Old Particular and Extra Old Particular ranges were introduced to replace Old Malt Cask and Old & Rare, and the company has since moved into distilling with the purchase of Strathearn distillery in 2019 and the construction of Clutha distillery in Glasgow.