Littlemill is the oldest licensed whisky distillery in Scotland. Whisky from the Lowland producer is incredibly rare and is no longer being produced after the distillery was closed, demolished and consumed by fire.
The humbly named distillery was built on the banks of the River Clyde near Glasgow in 1772. One year later, Robert Muir was granted the first licence by King George III’s government to retail ale, beer and other excisable liquors. This date was etched into the gable end of the distillery warehouses until it fell silent and was largely dismantled in the 1990s.
Littlemill had eight different owners from 1777 to 1994. Among them, Jane MacGregor was the first female to hold a distilling licence in 1823. The Lowland distillery closed in 1929 and again in 1984 before it fell silent for the last time in 1994. The distillery was dismantled in 1997 and anything that remained was lost to a fire in 2004.
Some independent bottlings and very rare own labels have been released. To date, Testament – a 44-year-old limited expression distilled in 1976 – is the oldest single malt from Scotland’s first distillery. Celestial Edition (40 years), Private Cellar (25-, 27- and 29-year-old) and a 1991 vintage have all been released in extremely limited quantities.
