Rosebank 1988 - The Whisky Connoisseur Miniature

The writing was on the wall for Rosebank in 1988 when owners United Distillers preferred the less accomplished but much more tourist-friendly Glenkinchie for their new Classic Malts series. Rosebank closed in 1993, after UD balked at a £2m upgrade to the distillery’s effluent treatment facility, and soon became a cult lost distillery - the Lowland equivalent of Brora or Port Ellen. Miraculously, Diageo have now restored both Brora and Port Ellen, while Rosebank was rebuilt under new owners Ian MacLeod Distillers and began distilling again in June 2023.

Today, new bottlings of old Rosebank are dwindling, and prices have increased dramatically over the last decade. Essential official bottlings of Rosebank include the glorious 1979 and 1981 Rare Malt Editions, and the splendid Special Releases from 2007, 2011 and 2014. Indie Rosebanks from the early 1990s vintages are generally excellent and usually more affordable at auction.

The entrepreneur and social activist Arthur J A Bell founded his Scotland Direct business with his wife Susan in 1973, and was an early pioneer of direct sales mail order, sending high quality Scottish goods around the world. The Whisky Connoisseur was his whisky bottling subsidiary, and came to national prominence when Bell was sued in 1986 by Guinness, who had recently bought the more famous Bell’s whisky company.

The courts ruled in Arthur J A Bell’s favour, however, allowing him to continue to use his own name and signature on his bottles. Throughout the early 1990s Bell’s Whisky Connoisseur range of single malts released some extraordinary whiskies, with the most famous being some sensational Bowmores bottled as Largiemeanoch and a superb Balmenach 1966 bottled as Miltonhaugh.