Port Ellen 40 Year Old – A Cask of Distinction bottling.
27 November 2020

For most serious whisky collectors, owning a whole cask of a mature single malt represents the ultimate purchase. This is particularly true when that cask is from a rare and much sought-after distillery like Port Ellen. Whiskies like today’s 40 year old rarity represent trophies that very few are lucky enough to glimpse, let alone experience.

So we’re particularly delighted to be able to offer a small number of bottles from this cask. Cask number 6819 was a single superlative sherry butt of Port Ellen that was distilled in 1979 and bottled in 2019. Only 575 bottles were produced; a fleeting run of a single malt that hails from the last years of Port Ellen’s production. Once drams like this are gone, they are lost forever…    Read More

This 40 year old has all of the complexity that Port Ellen fans expect. Intense yet surprisingly delicate flavours are imbued with signature smoke and peat notes that flow and thread their way through the whisky. It’s a marvel; long, elegant and detailed, an evocative and arresting example of the distillery’s inimitable style.

Port Ellen’s most recent distilling run lasted 16 years (from 1967 to 1983), and yet today it is the distillery on everyone’s lips. Releases are scarce, sought after, and invariably highly collectible. The few casks that have come to market in the past handful of years have shown great versatility, with considerable differences of style evident between different releases. Some sherry cask matured Port Ellen can be beautifully rich, spicy, sweet and leathery while bourbon and refill casks often show a more austere, peppery medium-weighted style. What appears to be common though, is a high level of peatiness and, in the best examples, a phenomenal complexity which Islay fans adore. For these reasons Port Ellen has become one of the most sought-after of the lost distilleries.

Tasting note: This superlative Port Ellen has a gentle nose-feel and a fruity top note. Beneath this, hints of ash emerge and intensify joined by traces of linseed oil and butterscotch or soft fudge. The pleasant texture is lightly oily and the taste is sweet, then becomes spicier with a shake of salt mid-palate and some white pepper. With water these tastes are softer with noticeable peat smoke. The finish is long and lightly drying with gentle white pepper dancing across the palate and an elegant thread of smoke which lingers in the aftertaste.