Speyburn 1977-2003 - 25 Year Old - Single Cask 1858

A large Speyside distillery with a low profile, Speyburn produces a clean, straightforward single malt whisky, the vast majority of which goes to blenders. Official bottlings in the last few decades have generally been safe to the point of anodyne, leading to Speyburn’s rise as a meme - an ironic but affectionate in-joke within certain quarters of the whisky nerderati.

Independent cask strength bottlings of Speyburn, however, are a very different matter, with sought after classics including 1970s vintages by Cadenhead’s and the SMWS, and a famous 1967 bottling by Moon Import. Speyburn themselves defied their bland image with a pair of superb 1978 vintage 21-year-old casks released in 1999 and the later Speyburn 25-year-old Solera, which won Best Highland Single Malt at the World Whisky Awards in 2012 - a fantastic, old school style, elegant whisky that still goes for very reasonable prices.

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.