Glen Albyn 1980-1996 - 15 Year Old - Signatory Vintage - Casks 2950-51 - Miniature

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.

Signatory Vintage Whisky Company was founded by Andrew Symington in 1988 after a spell as assistant manager at the Prestonfield House Hotel, where he had the opportunity to buy a cask of Glenlivet 1968. A robust and canny businessman, Symington had soon acquired some outstanding parcels of casks from great distilleries, and quickly established a reputation among single malt fans for good value, high quality single casks, the majority of which were released at full strength.

Throughout the 1990s and beyond, Signatory released outstanding whisky from Ardbeg, Glenfarclas, Springbank and many more, with frequently remarkable examples of lost or obscure distilleries. Soon established as one of the leading new wave independent bottlers, Symington was also an early exponent of bottling whiskies without colouring or chill filtration, a policy that has also served Signatory well at their Edradour distillery, which was purchased in 2002.