Carsebridge 1979-2005 - 25 Year Old - Duncan Taylor - Rare Auld - Single Cask 32901

Carsebridge was founded around the turn of the 19th century and operated initially as a Lowland malt whisky distillery until being converted to grain distillation in the 1850s. Carsebridge joined the fledgling grain whisky cartel Distillers Company Limited on its inauguration in 1877 and by the time of Alfred Barnard’s visit in 1886 was already producing around 6 million litres of grain spirit per annum. 

Carsebridge was damaged by a fire in 1902 but was rebuilt after the Great War, and the distillery was expanded in the 1950s and 1960s. Sadly, Carsebridge distillery was mothballed in the whisky crisis of 1983, with most of the buildings demolished in the 1990s. The first official bottling of Carsebridge was a 48-year-old in 2018’s Special Releases; independent Carsebridge is drying up but is usually great value and well worth trying if you can find it.

Duncan Taylor was founded in 1938, originally as a cask broker. The Glasgow-based company was acquired in the 1960s by the American blender and entrepreneur Abe Rosenberg, who amassed a large stock of maturing casks. Following Rosenberg’s death in 1994 the Duncan Taylor business lay dormant until the early 2000s, when the trustees offered some casks to businessmen Euan Shand and Alan Gordon. 

Shand and Gordon were so impressed with Duncan Taylor’s stock that they bought the company in 2002 and began bottling some of Rosenberg’s best casks. A string of extraordinary bottlings of Longmorn, Macallan, Bowmore and Springbank were released under the now defunct Peerless range and today Duncan Taylor, with Shand in full control since 2006, is established as one of Scotland’s most interesting independent bottlers.