Millburn 1979-1992 - 13 Year Old - SMWS 87.2

Millburn is a lost Highland distillery, another victim of Diageo forerunner DCL’s catastrophic wave of distillery closures in the 1980s. The distillery’s character was very traditional old school unsexy Highland style, with a tweedy, waxy, oily funk and sometimes a thread of smoke. Aged for long periods in refill wood, Millburns often show a delightful fruitiness.

The only official bottlings of Millburn were a trio of Rare Malts editions released between 1995-2005; all are excellent, but the standout was the classic 35-year-old Millburn 1969, which has become highly sought after. Independent bottlings of Millburn are relatively scarce, with only a tiny number released in the last decade. Unless Diageo or Gordon & MacPhail are hoarding stock for a 40-year-old Millburn release it seems likely that the last cask from this splendid lost Inverness distillery may already have been bottled.

The Scotch Malt Whisky Society (SMWS) began in late 1970s Edinburgh when founder Pip Hills persuaded a group of friends to chip in for a cask of Glenfarclas, and was officially formalised in 1983. Today the SMWS has two venues in Edinburgh, a London bar and a string of international partnerships serving its 35,000 members. 

The Society’s whiskies are known for their unique SMWS coding system. Each cask bottled is assigned two numbers, representing the distillery and the bottling number, so 1.45 is the forty-fifth cask bottled from the first distillery and 33.27 is the 27th cask from the 33rd distillery.

Glenmorangie bought the Society in 2004, but sold it in 2015 to a private consortium who floated the SMWS on the stock market in 2021 via their holding company Artisanal Spirits Co.