Arran Founder’s Reserve 5 Years Old 1995

The Founder's Reserve represents the earliest commercial Arran bottling and one of the most historically significant releases in the distillery's catalogue. The Founder's Bonds were issued by Harold Currie in 1994 to fund the construction of the distillery, with each £450 bond entitling the holder to five cases of Lochranza Blend in 1998 and five cases of Isle of Arran Single Malt in 2001. A total of 2,500 bonds were sold, providing critical working capital alongside £861,000 from private investors and £200,000 from the founding principals. This Founder's Reserve bottling draws specifically on cask 95/177 from the inaugural 1995 distillation that ran on 29 June 1995, with the cask producing an outturn of 399 bottles at five years old as part of the wider bond redemption.

Spirit was distilled in 1995 under the supervision of Gordon Mitchell, the first distillery manager at Lochranza who had previously worked at Cooley in Ireland. Maturation took place in single ex Bourbon cask 95/177 at the new Lochranza warehouses, with some casks of the period held at Springbank in Campbeltown due to limited on site capacity in the early years. Bottled at 56.8% representing the natural cask strength of this five year cask, without chill filtration and without added colour.

At five years old the spirit retained much of its new make character, with the cask underlying rather than dominating the profile. The Bourbon casks contributed vanillin and the early stage extraction of whisky lactones from American oak, layered against the heavy fresh fruit ester load that defines young Arran new make. As the first commercial single malt bottling of the post 1837 Arran revival, this Founder's Reserve is the foundational reference point for everything subsequent the distillery has released.