Glenury Royal 1971 - 23 Year Old - Rare Malts 61.3%

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.