Speyburn-Glenlivet 1975-1991 - 15 Year Old - Cadenheads Miniature

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.

In 1842 George Duncan established a wine merchant and distillery agency business in Aberdeen. Duncan was joined in the early 1850s by his brother-in-law William Cadenhead, who took over the business after Duncan’s death in 1858, changing the company’s name to Wm. Cadenhead. When Cadenhead died in 1904 the company passed to his nephew Robert Duthie, who developed the spirits side of the business.

Duthie died suddenly in 1931, and employee Ann Oliver was put in charge of Cadenhead’s. Sadly, Oliver’s tenure ended in financial difficulty and on her retirement in 1972 the business was forced to sell its entire inventory. Cadenhead’s was acquired soon afterwards by J & A Mitchell, proprietors of Springbank distillery, who relocated the business to Campbeltown. Cadenhead’s has flourished under Mitchell’s stewardship, releasing many legendary single malt bottlings in the 1980s and 1990s and now has outlets in Edinburgh and London as well as Campbeltown.