Gold Medal at Malt Maniacs Awards 2018

The match between the virile and peaty distillate from Ledaig and Oloroso is always a very interesting one. For this bottling, we let the whisky spend its final 55 months of maturation in fresh sherry casks from one of Spain’s best bodegas, and the result is fat, leathery, earthy. The peat smoke definitely wins the battle against the oak and the wine, but as it often happens the interaction between Oloroso and smoke is magical, more than the sum of the parts. In spite of the hints of fruit, the winey dry character and the complexity added by the sherry, it still is a very tarry, maritime, salty and wild peat monster. A tad gentler than our younger bottlings from Ledaig, and certainly much more intricate in its tapestry of flavours, but still bold and hair-raising.