Arran Private Cask 17 Years Old 1996

The 594 bottle outturn at seventeen years is unusually high for a Private Cask bottling, indicating an Oloroso seasoned butt of approximately 500 litre capacity rather than the smaller hogshead format that most Private Cask releases use. The 1996 vintage captures Lochranza in its second full production year, with the distillery's house style already stabilised under the original Gordon Mitchell production template. Cask 1996/1547 was bottled in 2014 for the German specialist retail trade.

Spirit was distilled at Lochranza in 1996 and matured seventeen years in a single Oloroso seasoned butt. Bottled in 2014 at 53.8% without chill filtration and without added colour.

Seventeen years of Oloroso butt maturation produces deep but measured cask integration, with the larger cask format slowing the surface area driven extraction rate compared to hogsheads of equivalent age. The sherry compound layer of sotolon, furfural and oxidised polyphenols develops alongside the underlying Arran spirit signature, with the flavour profile of citric, fresh fruit and honey indicating that the cask interaction sits in balance rather than dominating the underlying spirit character.