Banff distillery is one of several tragically lost smaller distilleries that Diageo saw fit to mothball in the eighties after the whisky industry's catastrophic overproduction in the 1970s. Banff was beset by problems for most of its life, and survived large fires, explosions, and German air raids before becoming a casualty of the whisky lake crisis.

However, despite all this the Banff distillery still managed to produce a wonderful old style and beautifully unsexy distillate that has found love on the tastebuds of many whisky nerds around the world. Interestingly, Banff was also a triple distilled malt up until 1924, but bottles of this are incredibly rare - we've only ever seen one, and it sold for £16,100 on our sister site Whisky-Online Auctions in October 2021.