Glenury Royal

Glenury Royal, sometimes just known as Glenury, was a single malt distillery located in the east Highlands. It was named after the valley through which the River Ury flows, to the northwest of Aberdeen and close to the distillery. Glenury Royal was closed in the early 1980s during a terrible slump in the Scotch whisky industry and was never to reopen. Now bottlings are extremely old and rare with an expensive price tag.

Glenury Royal was known for its fragrant and elegant yet spicy and robust spirit. The whisky has an oily texture and shows distinct notes of cereal and tropical fruit. The Highland malt also had a hint of peat smoke until the mid-1960s. Very few bottlings are available due to the time since the distillery's closure in 1983.

Diageo holds most of the remaining stock. Glenury Royal featured as one of the founding whiskies in the Rare Malts line-up created in the mid-1990s. Other single malt releases include 36, 40 and 50-year-old expressions. Other avenues include independent bottlers, especially Gordon & Macphail who purchased a good amount of maturing stock upon the cessation of production. The single malt can occasionally be found under the names of Garron and Downie. It has also featured in super-premium and old expressions of Johnnie Walker such as the Blue Label Ghost and Rare.

Very little is known about the production at Glenury Royal due to the significant time since distilling ceased. There were two large wash stills and two smaller but taller spirit stills. These produced around one million litres per year during the final 25 years of its life. Water was taken for production and cooling from Cowie Water in the foothills of the nearby Grampian Mountains.

The Glenury distillery was founded in 1825 by Captain Robert Barclay. He was an eclectic and eccentric character who was the Laird of Ury, a friend of royalty and one-time local Member of Parliament for the British Government. The distillery was located in the town of Stonehaven and was granted its Royal suffix by King William IV in 1835. Only two other Scottish distilleries were bestowed this honour - Royal Brackla and Royal Lochnagar. Barclay built the distillery to financially help local barley farmers as a consistent supply of grain was needed.

Captain Barclay died in 1854 and the distillery ownership went to auction. The highest bidder was William Ritchie. His Glasgow-based William Ritchie & Co operated Glenury Royal until 1938. The distillery fell silent during World War II and would not reopen until 1953. This was under the ownership of Distillers Company Ltd, which oversaw a total refurbishment in the mid-1960s.

Glenury Royal was mothballed - meaning a distillery is taken out of production but equipment remains ready to restart - in 1983. The decision was taken to terminally cease production in 1985. The ownership was transferred to United Distillers (the company that would later evolve into Diageo) in 1986. The distillery buildings were sold to a property developer in 1993. They demolished and replaced them with residential apartments. The only part of the distillery site that remains today is the base of the brick chimney stack. This carries a small plaque commemorating Captain Barclay.