This is a distillery very close to my heart as I tried to buy it with a group of patriotic New Zealand Scots based in Dunedin, in the mid 1980s. The last distillation at Dallas Dhu was in March, 1983 but there was sufficient stock to underpin a modest commercial revival which would have been assured by the generally excellent condition of the stills and associated equipment. However, all this was around the time of the Guinness take-over of DCL and the creation of United Distillers and although this was a deal of great insignificance given all else that was going on, rather surprisingly our offer was eventually rejected. I believe that this had a lot to do with what had happened at Glen Garioch some ten years previously, but that’s another story.

After visiting Dallas Dhu in 1985 I had written as follows: “if anyone took a notion to creating on a modest scale a model traditional Highland malt distillery, Dallas Dhu would be an ideal site”. How prescient was that because it was sold in 1986 to Historic Scotland who turned it into a whisky museum.

Against that background, we have a small selection of Dallas Dhu independent bottlings available.