Glen Albyn 1975 - Cadenheads Cask Strength - Single Cask 3344

Glen Albyn is one of the Highland’s lost malt whisky distilleries. The distillery was built in Inverness in 1844 but was closed by Diageo forerunner Distillers Company Ltd in 1983 during the whisky lake crisis and was later demolished to make way for a supermarket. Glen Albyn had one pair of stills and used old-fashioned worm tubs, making a very old school, austere ‘unsexy’ Highland single malt whisky, often with grassy, cereal and minerally notes. 

The only modern official bottling of Glen Albyn was a Rare Malts 1975 26-year-old from 2002, though there was a short-lived 10-year-old OB in the 1970s and some earlier 8-year-olds are known to exist. Indie bottlings have dried up in the last decade, though high quality old vintage casks had previously been released by Cadenhead’s, Douglas Laing, Signatory and Gordon & MacPhail. Sadly, the latter’s Private Collection Glen Albyn 1979 released in 2019 may turn out to have been the last cask of Glen Albyn.

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.