Bunnahabhain – 10yo/2000 – Adelphi – 59.8%

Dark gold to copper in colour leading you to prepare yourself for a nicely sherried dram, presumably from a first fill cask.

The nose has a strong spirity quality, this is over 10 years younger in age than others reviewed in this series. It’s beautifully fruity and strongly sherried with slight gingery notes and hits of smoke and a drop of citrus.

The mouth feel is medium thick with warming oils washing around your mouth. It’s the highest ABV in this series of reviews, but it’s still very smooth on way down, nice and fruity with a wee bit of a peat tickle right at the end of the finish. A drop of water helps bring out even more sweet fruit notes with lashings of malt and makes it all the smoother by taking away a few of the more spirit note kicks. Some wood notes make an appearance towards the end of the finish.

This is a hugely enjoyable dram that’s sadly now fairly hard to find, you’re probably mostly looking on the auctions for this now. However any sherried Bunnas are likely to be great and worth looking out for. For a distillery that may have had a patchy past in the way of consistency, it seems to have banished that altogether and certainly the four Bunnas reviewed in this series have all been fantastic quality drams, along with others I’ve tasted over time.

Bunnahabhain is owned by Burn Stewart Distillers Ltd who made the decision in 2010 to change their entire range of malts (also including Tobermory / Ledaig and Deanston) to be un-chillfiltered and bottled at 46.3% abv – the way whisky would have been produced at the hands of craftsman many years ago. This has kept whisky geeks very happy, and we hope that more distillers follow suit. In the case of the four independently bottled Bunnas in this review series, they are all un-chillfiltered, with no colouring added and bottled as cask strength.

Sample (and subsequent bottle) purchased from Master of Malt – £63.95