Fall is a special time of year for whiskey, something that we’ve been covering throughout the season with the arrival of Birthday Bourbon, Pappy Van Winkle, and the forthcoming Buffalo Trace Antique Collection (stay tuned for details in a few weeks). But one annual series will not return this year—and its future remains uncertain—because Diageo announced that it was canceling its Special Releases collection of rare and collectible single malts for this year.
This news arrived last Friday via industry trade website The Spirits Business, which confirmed that a representative for the drinks company said that it had “paused its Special Releases collection for the year.” The reason provided was that Diageo needed to take the time to “review feedback to ensure that any future offerings meet the current needs of its consumers and customers.” Special Releases first arrived a quarter century ago in 2001, and over the years this annual collection has included whiskies from some of Diageo’s most popular distilleries, as well as some lesser known operations, released at cask strength with different ages and maturations than you’d normally see. For example, the 2025 series included a 14-year-old Talisker that was aged in volcanic rock-toasted American oak casks, an eight-year-old single grain whisky from Teaninich that included rye in the mashbill, and a 17-year-old Glen Ord whisky that stood out for having been finished in mezcal and ex-sherry casks.
This is not the first time that Diageo has been in the news during what is by all accounts a difficult time for the whisky industry. The company has been restructured under its new CEO Dave Lewis, including cutting about 2,000 jobs in America and Europe. Last July, we reported that Diageo was closing the visitor center for Aviation Gin in Oregon, which opened just a few years before. And over the past few years, the company has paused production at Cascade Hollow, where George Dickel Tennessee whiskey is produced, and Balcones in Texas, as well as one of its facilities that supplies malted barley to its many distilleries around Scotland—all of this amidst a drop in profits.
This most recent news might not come as a surprise to some, given reports that Diageo and other major drinks companies are sitting on a glut of aged spirits (not just whiskey) worth about $22 billion at the moment. That’s an environment that might make it a bit difficult to sell a series like Special Releases, which does put a twist on the whisky produced by its core distilleries, although maybe not enough to justify the relatively high price tags these bottles have commanded. We reached out to a representative for Diageo to find out more about the future of Special Releases, but have not heard back yet. We will update this story if and when we do.
Authors
Jonah Flicker
