The Glen Grant, One of Scotland’s Most Storied Distilleries, Just Released Its Oldest Scotch Ever: Devotion 70-Year Old Single Malt

The Glen Grant—a Speyside malt maker—has spent some 183 years cultivating its iconic status. Visit in the modern era and you can marvel at its swan-necked copper stills, which exist largely as they did over a century ago. From its bucolic, emerald-tinged slice of Scotland, this is a brand that consistently gets the job done. And yet, in all its history, it's never released a whisky as old as the one it reveals today. Here’s everything you need to know about Devotion 70-Year Old Single Malt, including how to to get it (spoiler alert: it involves a lot of cash).

Let’s start with the maturation. The liquid was sourced from a single French oak barrel, which was initially seasoned with oloroso sherry sometime before 1953. Master distiller Dennis Malcolm has been under the employ of Glen Grant for nearly as long. He began working there as an apprentice in 1961. But it wasn’t until several decades later that he first stumbled upon the cask in question collecting cobwebs in the back of one of his warehouses.

The moment he dipped a copper dog into the vessel, he knew he'd stumbled upon something quite exceptional. It was already exhibiting an intense aroma of honeysuckle and syrup-soaked porridge. It held decadent, dark fruit notes across a rich, full body. And it was sustaining a sturdy ABV, high above the 40 percent required of the category. In other words, this was a unicorn cask. Indeed, the fact that there’s even anything left in the barrel after all these years is something of a small miracle.

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But casks were constructed differently in those days, often with thicker staves, meaning they protected their prized contents from evaporation better than their contemporary counterparts. All that precious cargo might have otherwise been lost to thirsty angels by now.

Thankfully, for us, that’s not the case. And we’re even more thankful for the patient restraint of Malcolm. He waited until the barrel’s 70th birthday to bring it to bottle—at a moment in time when it is brimming with ripened stone fruit, balanced in its delivery of oak, and spry at an exacting 111-proof. It fades, inchmeal, into smoked leather and tobacco leaf.

“This is a lifetime of character and legacy captured in a magnificent creation,” he confirms. “It is like nothing we have ever seen.”

Besides being the distillery’s oldest to date, there’s also something else significant about its particular age statement: 70 years aligns with the length of Queen Elizabeth II’s reign over the United Kingdom. Malcolm is careful to point out that this was no coincidence.

“In the true spirit of The Glen Grant, we bring together the inspiring legacy of our story with the personal devotion of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II,” says the legendary distiller. “To realize this exquisite masterpiece; to be devoted, is to show unwavering loyalty and love to something you care for deeply, which sits at the heart of our whisky-making philosophy, as well as shining through with our creative collaborators.”

A bit more on those collaborators: Malcolm teamed up with award-winning craftsman John Galvin and hot glass master Brodie Nairn to conceive seven hand-blown decanters worthy of holding this mahogany-hued magic.

That’s right—there are only seven bottles up for grabs. And each is suspended in a bespoke objet d’art (fashioned from an elm tree felled on the Glen Grant property) celebrating one of seven facets of the Queen’s reign.

The first of those decanters is set to be auctioned by Sotheby’s in an online event that'll run from September 11 to 22. All of the proceeds from the sale will be donated to the Royal Scottish Forestry Society, among the Queen’s most cherished organizations. “Number One,” as it's been dubbed, features the Queen Elizabeth Rose, engraved in gold and with embellishments unique to this auction piece.

Considering getting in on the action? Well, you’ll likely be emboldened by these encouraging words from Jonny Fowle, the global head of spirits at Sotheby’s…

The Glen Grant Devotion 70-Year Tasting Notes

“This whisky embodies so much of what is important in whisky collecting: quality, rarity, age and, most of all, provenance as the oldest whisky ever to be released directly from The Glen Grant Distillery itself,” he says. “It displays a fantastically deep, dark color after seven decades of oak maturation, which contrasts beautifully with John Galvin’s opulent light wood structure, making it the perfect centerpiece for the world’s most impressive whisky collections.”

If you’re locked out of the online sale, don’t despair. Following the auction period, the remaining six bottles will be made available for sale beginning in October. Just make sure you have a lot of savings squared away.

How Much Does The Glen Grant Devotion 70-Year Cost?

How much, you ask? We can’t say, exactly. But Fowle estimates the first edition will command between £70,000 (~$88,715) to £110,000 (~$139,406) by the time the hammer drops.

Glen Grant, for its part, tells us that the price of the additional decanters are only available upon request, which you can solicit by emailing theglengrant@mcsaatchi.com.

It’s kind of like when you see “market price” next to the pricey proteins on the menu of a fancy restaurant. You can expect this one to equal the cost of quite a few seafood towers. But then again, it’ll last a lot longer.