Littlemill 250th Anniversary 45 Years Old 1976

Released to mark 250 years since Littlemill's 1772 founding, this 45 Year Old is a 1976 vintage of just 250 bottles, matured in American oak and finished in Oloroso. It is a monument to Scotland's oldest licensed distillery, and a near-impossible survival: four and a half decades in cask, from a distillery demolished in 2005.

Across forty-five years the angel's share claimed well over half the cask, the humid warehouse drawing alcohol off faster than water and leaving a concentrated, gently strengthened core. The light spirit needed careful, low-tannin American oak to survive so long without being overwhelmed; the Oloroso then layered dried fruit through its melanoidins.

At 41.8% it is rich and gently sweet, fig and raisin over lignin vanilla and the worn Lowland softness, decades of slow oxidation read as deep, mellow fruit. An outturn this small from a lost distillery puts it among the rarest Lowland whisky in the world. The 250th Anniversary 45.