Arran 8 Year Old 2014 SMWS Single 1st Fill Ex-Sherry Butt 121.105 Feliz Navidad Island Single Malt Scotch Whisky (2023) 70cl

1 of 522 bottles produced from a single 500 litre ex sherry butt.
Initially 475 litres or so go into the cask being able to produce 671bottles if it was bottled from day 1. So after 8 years about 150 bottles worth are lost to the angels.

The Scotch Malt Whisky Society was founded in Edinburgh in 1983 by Phillip 'Pip' Hills who, while travelling around Scotland in the 1970s, fell in love with whiskies drawn straight from the cask. After he expanded his syndicate the Society was purchased by Glenmorangie PLC in 2004. In 2015, the Society was sold back to private investors. In June 2021, the private owners floated the holding company The Artisanal Spirits Company plc on the Alternative Investment Market of the London Stock Exchange.

It has a unique code system where the first number refers to the distillery and the second refers to the cask from which the bottle comes. SMWS also offers the largest range of distilleries of any independent bottler. These curiously named drams really do have something for every whisky lover!

TASTING NOTES

Basking in a warm breeze from Iberia, we nosed pastel de nata with cinnamon, packets of raisins and slices of caña de lomo served with fig jam. The palate contained lovely dusky sweetness – cocoa powder and dark chocolate, dandelion and burdock (or artisan cola), and yeast extract and chilli jam smeared on rye crackers. Adding water, our noses found dried apricots, pork sausage with fennel seeds and a central thrust of chocolate and orange (chocolate chews, marmalade, chocolate orange). The palate retained its mouth-coating texture and now suggested flavours of apple wine, caraway seed and balsamic glaze drizzled over ripe figs.

About Arran

The Isle of Arran has played host to many distilleries, mostly illicit and the last legal distillery closed in 1835. What is surprising is that it took until 1995 for a still to run again as the Arran distillery at Lochranza came online. Financed mostly by Harold Currie who had retired from Chivas, the team also sought investment from 2000 investors who gave up £450 for a share of future whiskies. Many of whom turned up for the official opening, including a descendent of the last person to be killed on Arran for distilling illegally. Since the initial days, Arran distillery has prospered thanks to an array of cask types and special editions. The whisky, in time, has come of age and growing demand meant an expansion in 2017, with a new pair of stills. Things went even further in 2019 when a second distillery (Lagg) was established at the southern end of Arran.

61.9% ABV

70cl

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