Ladyburn Miniatures

Ladyburn distillery was, in reality, two pot stills within the Girvan distillery complex. Malt whisky was produced from 1966 to 1975. The stills were dimantled in 1976. There have been very few bottlings of Ladyburn Single Malt partly because, since the late 1980s, Wm Grant and Sons have prevented independent bottlers from using the names of their distilleries on independent labels. Most commonly the malt has been bottled as Ayrshire Malt by both G & M (no miniatures bottled) and Duncan Taylor (three miniatures produced but only sold as part of a set with a 70cl bottle).

James MacAthur bottled a number of miniatures but these were all re-bottled from 75 / 70 cl bottles and are therefore not true miniatures. Most of these minis do contain Ladyburn Single Malt but the final miniature in the album below contains Ladyburn Pure Malt. This was a vatted (blended) malt bottled briefely by a Wm.Grant subsiduary for the German market and a couple of bottles of this malt were re-bottled by MacArthurs for a private collector.

The most collectable 75cl bottle of Ladyburn was produced by Grants for the USA market in the late 1980s (see picture). Several, almost certainly, fake miniatures with a plain version of this label were produced in Italy some years ago in both TR and FaC formats. My information from Grants was that they never produced any miniatures of Ladyburn. The first photograph in the album is of such a "fake" miniature.

In my opinion the Ayrshire minis from Duncan Taylor should be regarded as the best examples of Ladyburn Single malt in miniature format.

750ml bottle of Ladyburn for the USA market circa 1990