Ladyburn whisky

After William Grant & Sons Ltd. built a grain distillery at
Girvan in 1963, they added another set of stills (pot stills this
time) to the complex in 1966. With these stills they produced
the 'Ladyburn' malt whisky. The main purpose of both of the
distilleries was production of whisky for the Grant's blends,
but over the years a handful of 'official' single malt whiskies
were bottled as well.
 
The malt whisky distillery was located in a corner of the
Girvan grain whisky distillery. The malt whisky installation
was closed again in 1975 and demolished in 1976, but the
(single) grain whisky from Girvan is still sold today under the
name Black Barrel. This makes Ladyburn (possibly) the malt
whisky distillery with the shortest history in all Scotland; it
was operational for less than a decade.
 
The short production history is one of the reasons that
Ladyburn is mostly of interest for malt whisky collectors.

1) Ladyburn used six stainless stell washbacks.

2) The grain stills at Girvan went into production on Christmas day in 1963.

3) More trivia about the Ladyburn distillery may be added later...
 

Ayrshire 30yo 1975/2005 (48,9%, Wilson & Morgan, Ladyburn distillery, C#3376, 223 Bts.)
Nose: Phew…. Pretty unique. Very old (rotting?) leather in the nose. 
I put it in the lower 80's during my first try but on closer inspection I actually think this one deserves silver.
Not terribly expressive but a lot of subtle complexities.
Taste: Oil on the palate. A third try even showed more to love.
During round three (and given enough time) it climbed up further to 89 points.
Score: 89 points - one of my favourites at the Malt Maniacs Awards 2006.

Ladyburn 27yo 1973/2000 (50.4%, OB by William Grant)
Nose: Very peculiar, but not unpleasant at all. A strange combination of peanuts and cinnamon.
Taste: Pretty peculiar on the palate too. Sardines! Then lots of wood & fruit. Good mouth feel; quite 'chewy'.
Score: 82 points - not bad at all, but this was actually my least favourite expression.
 

These were not all the (official & independent) expressions of Ladyburn whisky I've tried over the years.
My Track Record used to contain a complete overview of all the single malts I've tried, but when I passed the 2000 malts mark (and the complete whisky list wouldn't fit on two separate HTML pages anymore) I gave up. My Liquid Log still contains my tasting notes on most single malts I've sampled and scored, though. You can find a specific expression through the search box at the top of each distillery profile. The mAlmanac now contains (purely personal) selections of some of the best single malts and the worst whiskies I've tried so far - as well as the ones with the highest 'Bang-For-Your-Buck' value. But those tasting notes and scores only reflect my own, purely personal opinions.
 
On Serge's distillery profile on Whiskyfun you can find another perspective on the whisky made at this distillery.
Check out the Malt Maniacs Monitor on Malt Maniacs for my scores on all expressions I've tried so far - and those of almost all the other certified malt maniacs as well. The Malt Maniacs Matrix contains a few thousand single malts that were sampled and scored by at least four different malt maniacs, so you can compare our individual opinions.
 
 

That being said, the four expressions I've tried so far (that was the status when I wrote the latest update of this distillery profile in March 2009) all scored comfortably in the 80's. Many 'high profile' distilleries can't boast about results like these, so it would seem that Ladyburn is one of the few obscure distilleries that actually produced malt whiskies that were worth hunting down. However, bottlings are just so rare that you'll probably never find more than a dozen different expressions. When I write this there are just 9 versions of ladyburn on the MMMonitor on Malt Maniacs.
 
Some of those bottlings were not even bottled under the name 'Ladyburn', but under the name 'Ayrshire' - the name of the area where the 'Girvan' distillery is located. Based on our experience so far it would seem that the bottlers Signatory Vintage and Wilson and Morgan used this 'pseudonym' for Ladyburn. I've sampled one expression by Italian bottler Wilson & Morgan that was released as 'Ayrshire' (this was actually my personal favourite with a score of 89 points) while Signatory Vintage releases its bottlings of Ladyburn under the 'Ayrshire' name as well.
 
Ladyburn should not be confused with Ladybank, another Lowland distillery.
The Ladybank distillery is located on the other end of the Lowlands; near the East coast and the new Daftmill distillery. Well... hold that thought. I'm actually not entirely sure if the Ladybank distillery is located anywhere; it has become frightfully quiet around this distillation project. It may have failed by now...