Glenturret 8 Year Old - 1980s

Glenturret claims to have started life in 1775 as an illicit Highland distillery called Hosh, which was renamed Glenturret a century later before being dismantled in the 1920s. The current Glenturret distillery was reborn on the Hosh site in the 1950s and was taken over by Highland Distillers (later Edrington) in 1990. Edrington made Glenturret the home of their Famous Grouse blend in 2002 before selling the distillery in 2019 to the crystal manufacturers Lalique.

Glenturret is a small distillery with a capacity well under half a million litres a year, the vast majority of which used to be destined for Famous Grouse. The distillery makes a small quantity of sought-after peated whisky named Ruadh Maor. Glenturret’s core range has been completely refreshed under the new owners, while at auction older long-aged official bottlings are often good value and well worth seeking out.

Distillery bottlings are, as the name suggests, bottled by or for the distillery from which the whisky has originated and are thus often referred to as Official Bottlings or OBs. Distillery bottlings are generally more desirable for collectors and usually fetch higher prices at auction than independent bottlings. They are officially-endorsed versions of the whisky from a particular distillery and are therefore considered the truest expression of the distillery’s character.

This ideal of the distillery character is regarded so seriously by the distilleries and brand owners that casks of whisky that are considered to vary too far from the archetype are frequently sold on to whisky brokers and independent bottlers. When this happens, it is often with the proviso that the distillery’s name is not allowed to be used when the cask is bottled for fear of diminishing or damaging the distillery’s character and status.