Miltonduff 12 Year Old - 1980s

Miltonduff distillery is a large, quiet Speyside workhorse, spending its days providing spirit for Ballantine’s blended whisky, with which it has been associated since 1936 when Ballantine’s owner Hiram Walker bought the distillery. Miltonduff and Ballantine’s became part of Pernod Ricard’s portfolio when former owner Allied Domecq was gobbled up by Pernod in 2005. In 2022 a major expansion plan was announced for Miltonduff that will take the distillery’s capacity to almost 16m litres per year.

In 1964, during the Hiram Walker days, Miltonduff was fitted with a pair of Lomond stills, on which the experimental Mosstowie single malt was produced until 1981. Independent bottlings of Mosstowie can still be found at auction, with excellent examples by Signatory and Sestante. Official bottlings of Miltonduff are rare, but there have been some great casks over the years from the likes of Gordon & MacPhail, Duncan Taylor, the SMWS and the Italian bottlers Sestante, Samaroli and Moon Import.

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.