Lockes Kilbeggan 1946-1980 - 34 Year Old - Last Known Cask

Kilbeggan distillery (aka Brusna or Locke’s) was founded by Matthew MacManus in Westmeath in 1757. The distillery flourished from the 1840s under the ownership of John Locke, but the 20th century was less kind to Kilbeggan. John Locke’s sons both died in the 1920s, and the distillery was closed from 1924-1931. During WWII, Locke’s distiller Thomas Coffey ran an illegal whiskey scam and in 1947 the distillery became the centre of a political scandal after a failed takeover. 

Mired in debt, Locke’s distillery closed in 1958 just a year after its bicentenary, and for a time the buildings were used as a piggery. Thankfully, in 1987 John Teeling of Cooley distillery bought Kilbeggan and released new whiskeys under the Kilbeggan and Locke’s brands. After extensive restoration Kilbeggan distillery reopened in 2007 as the oldest operational whiskey distillery in the world.

Distillery bottlings are, as the name suggests, bottled by or for the distillery from which the whisky has originated and are thus often referred to as Official Bottlings or OBs. Distillery bottlings are generally more desirable for collectors and usually fetch higher prices at auction than independent bottlings. They are officially-endorsed versions of the whisky from a particular distillery and are therefore considered the truest expression of the distillery’s character.

This ideal of the distillery character is regarded so seriously by the distilleries and brand owners that casks of whisky that are considered to vary too far from the archetype are frequently sold on to whisky brokers and independent bottlers. When this happens, it is often with the proviso that the distillery’s name is not allowed to be used when the cask is bottled for fear of diminishing or damaging the distillery’s character and status.