Old Comber 30 Year Old - 1980s

Old Comber is an historic Irish whiskey brand, originally produced at the Comber distillery in Co. Down in Northern Ireland. Old Comber distillery started life as two separate facilities, known as Upper and Lower, both of which were founded in 1825. Upper was a converted brewery co-founded by John Miller, while Lower was a converted paper-mill. Miller went on to buy the Lower distillery around 1860 and amalgamated the businesses.

Lower Comber was closed early in the 20th Century; Upper Comber lived on but struggled after WWII and shut down in 1953. Whiskey from Upper Comber was occasionally bottled in later decades, and bottles of Old Comber 30-year-old bottled in the 1980s are still seen at auction. In 2021, the Comber whiskey brand was revived by Echlinville distillery near Comber, releasing an acclaimed blended pot still whiskey finished in port casks.

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.