Albion AN 1994 Full Proof 17 Year Old 5212258

Albion AN 1994 Velier 17 Year Old

Velier was founded by Casimir Chaix in Genoa in 1947 as a wine and spirits importer and distributor. By the 1980s they were still a small family-company with less than ten staff. This all changed in 1986 when it was purchased by Luca Gargano, a former brand ambassador for Saint James who was at the time still in his twenties. Under his direction, they selected their first single cask whiskies in 1992, and their first rum in 1996. In the decades that followed, Velier have gone on to become one of the most collectible brands in the industry, and Gargano has positioned them as the one of the foremost authorities and bottlers of rum anywhere in the world.

Velier's earliest Demerara releases were bottled in 1996, laying the groundwork for what would later become affectionately known as the \"Age of Velier's Demerara.\" This began in earnest in 2004, after Gargano was invited to the Demerara Distillers Ltd warehouses in Guyana to select tropically aged barrels to be bottled by Velier for the first time. The \"age\" only lasted until 2015, but has an enduring legacy of having indelibly raised the profile of the historic rum stills and marque's of Guyana, which have become some of the most sought after in the world, these Velier releases in particular.

This AN marque was distilled at Uitvlugt distillery in 1994, and bottled in February 2011 from four casks; #7100, #7101, #7102, #7103.

Interestingly the label states the spirit filled in to the cask was distilled in a wooden continuous still. While the Albion distillery did indeed have such a still, when they closed in 1968 it was not transferred to the Uitlvugt distillery, who opted instead for their four-column French Savalle still to make the 'Albion style' rums. The wooden continuous still associated with Uitvlugt is the one they received from Enmore when it closed in 1993, but the vintage here predates this. Herein we have an anomaly then, as Uitvlugt were the distillery that assumed the rights to the production of Albion rum. Either Uitvlugt had a wooden coffey still in the 1980s that is not well documented, or the information on the box is mistaken. Either way, this is a special and spectacularly rare rum.

Uitvlugt closed in 2000, with all of its stills now operated at Diamond distillery, including the four-column Savalle, which continues to produce the AN marque.