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Glenury Royal 1953 - 50 Year Old - Special Releases 2003
Glenury Royal 1953. 50 Year Old. Bottled by Diageo for their Special Releases 2003. One of only 498 bottles. 70cl. 42.8%.
One of the rarest and most prestigious bottlings in the history of Diageo’s Special Releases, this remarkable Glenury Royal was distilled in 1953 and matured for an extraordinary 50 years before being bottled for the 2003 collection.
Released at a natural cask strength of 42.8%, just 498 bottles were produced, making this one of the smallest and most sought-after editions from the early years of the Special Releases. At the time it represented an exceptional opportunity to taste whisky from Glenury Royal, a distillery that had closed two decades earlier in 1985 and was subsequently demolished.
Founded near Stonehaven in 1825 by Captain Robert Barclay, Glenury Royal was one of only a handful of Scottish distilleries permitted to use the prestigious 'Royal' title. Its whisky has always been scarce, with relatively few official bottlings appearing following the distillery's closure.
An early highlight of the Special Releases and one of the oldest single malts ever bottled by Diageo, this magnificent 1953 Glenury Royal has become increasingly difficult to find and remains one of the landmark releases from this celebrated series.
Glenury Royal was a high class Highland distillery in the portfolio of Diageo forerunners Scottish Malt Distillers, but fell victim to the whisky crisis of the 1980s and was closed in 1983. The distillery had been founded in 1825 by Captain Robert Barclay Allardyce, who achieved great fame in 1809 by walking 1000 miles in 1000 hours for a bet, and later acquired the ‘Royal’ suffix for his distillery from his friend King William IV.
Glenury was extensively modernised in the 1960s after Diageo forerunner DCL purchased the distillery in 1953. A sherry-influenced 12-year-old official bottling of Glenury Royal appeared in the 1970s under DCL’s subsidiary John Gillon & Co., but the famous bottlings now are the four superb Rare Malts editions that appeared 1995-1999 and the subsequent Diageo Special Releases, the best of which is the Glenury Royal 1968 36-year-old bottled in 2005.
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.