Glendullan 1981-1992 - 11 Year Old - SMWS 84.2

A large Speyside workhorse distillery in Diageo’s portfolio, Glendullan was founded in 1897 and expanded with the construction of a second distillery onsite in 1972. Both Glendullan distilleries were in operation until 1985, when the original Glendullan was closed.

Prior to Glendullan’s coronation as the US representative of The Singleton family in 2007, official bottlings were quite rare. Glendullan was bottled as a 12-year-old by DCL subsidiary Macdonald Greenless from the 1970s onwards, with both 43% and 47% versions in existence, but these were replaced by the 43% Flora & Fauna 12-year-old in 1991. 

At auction, the 1970s vintage Glendullans bottled for the Rare Malts series are well worth checking out, as are the Glendullan Centenary bottling from 1998 and the famous sherried Glendullan 18-year-old Manager’s Dram released in 1989. Some superb 1960s vintage Glendullans have been independently bottled by Cadenhead’s and Douglas Laing.

The Scotch Malt Whisky Society (SMWS) began in late 1970s Edinburgh when founder Pip Hills persuaded a group of friends to chip in for a cask of Glenfarclas, and was officially formalised in 1983. Today the SMWS has two venues in Edinburgh, a London bar and a string of international partnerships serving its 35,000 members. 

The Society’s whiskies are known for their unique SMWS coding system. Each cask bottled is assigned two numbers, representing the distillery and the bottling number, so 1.45 is the forty-fifth cask bottled from the first distillery and 33.27 is the 27th cask from the 33rd distillery.

Glenmorangie bought the Society in 2004, but sold it in 2015 to a private consortium who floated the SMWS on the stock market in 2021 via their holding company Artisanal Spirits Co.