Sold outNov 2023In short · Bruichladdich (Islay), 15 years.
“An immediately robust and distillate-forward example of this Islay make, one which gives the lie to the idea that it is a 'gentle' malt.…”Extract · full tasting notes at SMWS
SMWS 23.81 is a single cask of Bruichladdich, in the Islay region, 15 years old, bottled at 59.7%, released in the Nov 2023 Outturn. Every Society bottle numbered 23.x is from Bruichladdich.
Specs, price and tasting-note extract from the SMWS. Full notes on smws.com.
Look out across Loch Indaal on the Rhinns of Islay and you'll find Bruichladdich, a Victorian distillery of 1881 that spent much of the 1990s standing silent, its stills cold. Then in 2001 a band of believers led by Mark Reynier woke it, Islay legend Jim McEwan at the helm and a near-heretical creed in their pockets: terroir, the radical notion that a whisky should taste of the very field and shore that made it. The old Victorian machinery still clanks and hisses. The spirit runs three ways, the unpeated Classic Laddie, the smoke-wreathed Port Charlotte, and Octomore, so ferociously peated it bends the imagination. Rémy Cointreau took the keys in 2012, but those aqua-blue bottles still carry one of whisky's great resurrection stories.