Bunnahabhain 20 Years Old 2004 Cask #800190 (Signatory)

Casks 800188 and 800190 sit consecutively in Signatory Vintage's filling ledger from 2004 production at Bunnahabhain, sister vessels from the same parcel of stock. Both ran for twenty years in single Oloroso butts before being drawn for the Cask Strength Collection in 2024. This is cask 800190, bottled at 61.2% natural strength alongside the slightly lower-ABV 800188 release for La Maison du Whisky.

The slight variation in bottling ABV between the two sister casks shows where individual casks within the same parcel diverge through twenty years of maturation despite identical filling conditions. Cool warehouse storage holds evaporation low across the period, but cask-to-cask differences in wood porosity, fill strength variation and warehouse position produce the small ABV gap visible in the final bottle. Side-by-side comparisons of sister-cask releases like these are where the variability of single-cask bottling becomes most clearly readable.

At 20 years in a single Oloroso butt, the spirit and wood are deep into integrated maturation. Walnut and dried-fig weight has concentrated through long oxidative interaction with the wine-seasoned wood; leather and polished-oak markers run through; the Bunnahabhain coastal signature holds underneath the sherry weight, with oily texture and gentle maritime salinity carrying from the Sound-side warehouse storage. Natural colour, non-chill-filtered, single cask.