Vale! The LAST EVER peated Arran Whisky to be produced…EVER – The Arran Barrel Bonfire!
EXCLUSIVE to the Club – This LIMITED EDITION, SPECIAL RELEASE is sure to become a collector’s item over the coming years – if you can save it that long! Of course, you can always get two – one to keep and one to drink!
The Arran Barrel Bonfire represents the end of an era at Arran in a couple of ways. Firstly, this is the final peated offering to come out of Arran… EVER! Since these casks were filled, no more peated spirit has been produced under the Arran name. And peated spirit production was altogether phased out of Lochranza Distillery in 2016. All peated spirit for the ‘Isle of Arran Distillers’ is now being produced at the sister distillery in the south of the island – Lagg Distillery. All peated expressions from the Isle of Arran Distillers will now come under the Lagg or Machrie Moor labels.
The other aspect of this whisky that makes it very special is the use of the quarter casks form Koval distillery in the USA for the second half of the maturation. These 115 litre ex-bourbon barrels were custom made at Koval for [eventual] use in Lochranza’s maturation program. No more of these special barrels have been filled since, making this release double-y unique.
Distilled in 2012 with a peat level of 42ppm it spent its first 5 ½ years in ex-bourbon casks before transferred into the smaller 115L Koval quarter casks for a further 5 1/2years. Bottled at a generous 50%abv and (of course!) non chill-filtered and 100% naturally coloured.
The Arran Barrel Bonfire is Edition 2 of the four-part Arran ‘Signature Series’. All the casks in this series have been hand-picked by distillery manager, Stuart Bowman and in his words, “the Signature Series is a selection of Arran Single Malts which showcase the diversity of our spirit and the values which are important to us”.
With this series, Stuart encourages you to look at the quality of the whisky in your glass and focus on investing in your own enjoyment. His aim is to provide you with an interesting, complex whisky with quality over quantity.
OUR TASTING NOTES
Nose: Yep, it’s peated… and no fooling! Big tar, bogan burnouts and Band-Aids by the bucketload! – yet with a seriously, lusciously sweet – grilled pineapple – background note and a handful of Jasmine flowers to boot.
Palate: Oh so oily rich and decadent on the plate this is. Huge, stewed fruits that really dominate the peat notes. IN fact, all those classic tarry, iodine-y peat notes [so strong on the nose] are remarkably subdued on the palate with its sweeter, creamier side side victorious. Peaches and cream, lovely vanilla and candied peel with campfire notes around the edges
Finish: Yet another 180 degree turn as the peat returns with all those peaty num-nums to chew on as it fades over a generous, lengthy finish. Those classic peat notes seem to evolve thorough all their various forms with flashes of that creamy sweetness bursting through the smoke.
This is an absolute BELTER of a whisky. Such a fantastic – almost textbook – balance between sweet and peat that keeps you guessing what it’ll throw at you right up to the very end. All the oil-smoke-tarry-hospitals you could ask for, dancing with a luscious swirl of vanilla fruit mince and creamy custard. So big, so good!
An 11 year old 100% sherry matured single cask Speysider!
FROM ARRAN
It’s my pleasure to present you with addition to Barrel Bonfire and I’m really looking forward to sharing this one with you all. Barrel Bonfire is a peated quarter cask expression of Arran single malt and it showcases the more heavily peated side of Arran matured in a Bourbon barrel. Over the years we have experimented with different peating levels of Lochranza from 14 ppm to 20 ppm right through to 42 ppm, which is the peating level of this expression. The core casks used in this bottling were sourced from a small distillery in Chicago called Koval, who used these custom built 115 litre casks to mature their bourbon before they shipped them to us at Lochranza. We enjoy working with Koval as they place a lot of importance on working with the best quality materials to create exciting and inspiring spirits a lot like ourselves.
– Stuart Bowman Lochranza Distillery Manager
The Signature Series is our four-part limited-edition series. It is a selection of Arran Single Malts which showcases the diversity of our spirit and embodies the values which are important to us. It features four unique bottlings specially chosen by Lochranza Distillery Manager Stewart Bowman and given his seal of approval.
With this bottling, we invite you to learn about the more heavily peated side of Arran matured in a Bourbon Barrel. The peated level of this bottling sits at 42ppm.
The Quarter Casks used in this bottling were sourced from a small distillery in Chicago – Koval – who use these custom built 115 litre casks to mature their Bourbon before they arrive with us in Lochranza.
The whisky in this bottling was originally filled into Bourbon Barrels in 2012. It was matured for nearly 5 and a half years, before being transferred into the Koval Quarter Casks in September 2018, where it spent the remaining 5 and a half years of its maturation time. We filled only a small number of these Quarter Casks and have not filled any more since. As such, they have a very rare place in our inventory.
Over the course of the secondary maturation, the intensity of the heavily peated whisky has taken on an even more complex and full-bodied character. The smaller the size of cask, the greater the surface contact area between the wood and the spirit, effectively creating an environment for ‘express’ maturation. The resulting whisky has the benefit of more intense flavours which add depth and greater nuance to the final dram. Smokier notes mingle with the well-loved charred citrus and sweet vanilla spices of Arran Single Malt, evoking a bonfire made from barrel staves.
Our Barrel Bonfire is bottled at 50% Vol, as always non-chill filtered and with no added colouring.
Nose: Hazelnuts coated in caramel. Orange zest and abundant vanilla. Rich dry smoke.
Palate: Rich and smooth. Mouth-watering, oily and complex. Spicy, cinnamon notes mingle with citrus
Finish: Spice, Citrus, Smoke, Peat, Vanilla, Cinnamon, Smooth, Toasted Oak.
ABOUT ARRAN
The Isle of Arran, often referred to as “Scotland in miniature,” boasts a rich whisky heritage that dates back to the 18th and early 19th centuries. During this period, the island was renowned for its illicit whisky production, with numerous illegal distilleries operating throughout the land. However, the last legal distillery, Lagg Distillery, ceased operations in 1837, leaving Arran without a licensed whisky producer for over 150 years
The revival of legal whisky production on Arran began in 1994 when Harold Currie, a former director of Chivas Brothers, founded Arran Distillers with the goal of establishing a distillery on the island. Construction commenced in 1995 in Lochranza, a village on the northern tip of the island, near Loch na Davie, which provided a pure water source essential for whisky production . The distillery’s opening marked the return of legal whisky-making to Arran after more than a century.
In 2019, Arran Distillers expanded its operations by opening a second distillery in Lagg, located on the southern part of the island. This new facility focuses on producing peated whiskies, complementing the unpeated expressions crafted at the Lochranza distillery. The establishment of Lagg Distillery not only revived another historic whisky-making site but also allowed Arran Distillers to diversify its product range, offering both Highland-style and Lowland-style whiskies.
