How To Collect Lost Scottish Distilleries

Nothing captures the whisky enthusiast’s imagination so much as searching for a whisky that is impossible to find. In fact there’s a famous inverse correlation that the collector’s reverence for a distillery increases in direct proportion to its unavailability.

Tracking down the last remaining liquid from a ‘lost’ distillery is not just another Sisyphean task, examples of single malts and single grains from the latter 20th century do remain and they can still be bought with surprising ease – for the time being at least.

What whisky lovers have long known – and the rest of the world is quickly discovering – is that the story of the twentieth century could well be told through the various rises and falls of the Scottish distillers. It is often said, only because it is so true, that each bottle from a long closed distillery is a time capsule and each sip is a portal into the past. It is also safe to say that when choosing what to buy, a whisky from a closed distillery will more likely retain its value, particularly if the distillery was destroyed and can never be rebuilt.

So apart from Port Ellen and Brora what whiskies from closed distilleries can you still bid on at auction today?
Here’s the complete list of all the Scottish distilleries that closed in the 20th century as well as links to available whiskies.