Rosebank 31yo

Dormant whisky factories, where production stopped years ago, are often referred to as a dormant distillery (dormant distillery). And while the term sometimes appears in reference to the Rosebank distillery, anything can be said about it but that it is dormant. Rosebank is bustling with life, and intensive work is underway to wake it up, to restart this iconic distillery for the Lowlands region. In mid-March, we wrote about the installation of new alembics, made on the model of those under which the furnaces were extinguished in 1993. Installation and finishing work is currently underway, as the restart of production was announced before the arrival of this autumn. Recently, however, there has been increasing talk of early 2023 as the date for its launch.

But just in case the memory of the distillery has dimmed a bit among whiskey lovers, the current owner of Rosebank, Ian Macleod Distillers, has just released a second edition of whiskey dating back to before its closure. Rosebank 31yo comes from the distillery's stockpiled inventory, purchased with the entire plant in 2017.

Rosebank 31yo was bottled in a limited edition, as a beverage with a strength of 48.1% vol. According to the accounts of a handful of lucky people who had the opportunity to taste it before bottling, its bouquet features citrus notes of lime, lemongrass and coriander. On the taste we can expect mint, chamomile, berries and banana bread, and the finish is expected to be sweet, with accents of peach, oak and herbs. The purchase of a single 700 ml bottle is an expense of £1800.

At the time of closure, located in Falkirk, on the Forth & Clyde Canal, the Rosebank distillery was owned by United Distillers, a predecessor of Diageo. It survived the most difficult period in the early 1980s. In the 1990s, when many of the corporation's owned distilleries were being shut down. However, just as preparations were being made to market a representative of the Lowlands region to the Classic Malts of Scotland set, Rosebank "lost out" to Glenkinchie and the decision was made to close it down. The official reason was said to be the short distance from Edinburgh, the country's capital, but it is said that it was the unpleasant proximity of the then neglected and closed Forth & Clyde canal, over which no one was in the taste of opening a tourist attraction. Today, the Forth & Clyde Canal is in a different state, having undergone revitalization and opened to navigation thanks to its connection to the Union Canal via the impressive Falkirk Wheel - an added attraction that draws crowds of tourists.

At the time when the distillery and the Rosebank brand were owned by UD and later Diageo, the whisky was known on the market primarily as a 10-year version, part of the Flora & Fauna series, as well as several Rare Malts editions and independent versions. Some of them are still available today via House of Whisky Online, which you are cordially invited to visit. An extremely limited number of bottles, already released by the new owner, Ian Macleod Distillers, came to market in early 2020. It is about two barrels from 1993, which we wrote about in February 2020. What stocks still rest in the distillery's warehouses is officially unknown. However, you don't have to be clairvoyant to assume with a high degree of probability that there are few of them left, and that each successive edition will be increasingly difficult to obtain. And getting more and more expensive. Until the first editions appear after the reactivation, but that's not before a little more than three years from now.


[16.08.2022 / Photo: Ian Macleod Distillers]