A bottle of Glenlivet 21 Year Old Single Malt Scotch Whisky. The fifth in the alphabetical private bottling series by Glenlivet, this was bottled from a single cask on 3 August 2007 to commemorate the solar eclipse visible from the distillery in May 2003.
50 bottles were made available to members of the Glenlivet Guardians, who had to collect them from the Glenlivet stand at Whisky Live London, and the other bottles were given as gifts to friends of the distillery.
This was bottled from cask number 12549.
George Smith had been a distiller in the glen of the river Livet prior to the Excise Act of 1823 but in 1824 he became the first distiller to obtain a licence to distil.
His whisky's popularity grew quickly, due in part to agent Andrew Usher, who drove sales and created Usher's Old Vatted Glenlivet, one of the first blended whisky brands.
In 1858, George Smith and his son John Gordon built the Glenlivet distillery at Minmore Farm, where it remains to this day.
So many other distillers in and around the Glenlivet region used the name Glenlivet for their whiskies that in 1884 Smith's grandson, George Smith Grant, went to court to claim exclusive right to use the name. It was eventually agreed that Smith had the right to call his whisky Glenlivet and other distilleries could use the Glenlivet as a suffix (eg Macallan Glenlivet, Longmorn Glenlivet, Strathisla Glenlivet, Aberlour Glenlivet, Dufftown Glenlivet, Glenfarclas Glenlivet etc). The practise continued for over 100 years.
After World War II, single malt bottlings became more widespread, but even by the 1970s, 95% of the distillery's output was still used in blends.
Today the distillery is owned by Pernod Ricard and remains the second best-selling single malt whisky in the world, after Glenfiddich.
This Glenlivet 21 Year Old Eclipse Single Cask Edition sold at our online auction for £200
