Oban 11 Years Old Hand Filled Distillery Exclusive 2024

This 11 year old is a hand filled distillery bottling, the kind of bottling visitors fill and label themselves at the distillery, this one offered in 2024. It comes straight from the small distillery at Oban in Oban, first run in 1794 and one of the oldest and tiniest distilleries in Scotland, sold only to those who make the trip in person.

Maturation was in ex-Bourbon American oak, soft wood that lets the distillery character show through clearly. The spirit is made slowly through the compact pot stills and condensed in the wooden worm tubs run hot, the prolonged copper contact tempering it into the soft, fruity make that defines Oban before the gentle cask does its work. Hand filled bottlings like this are drawn straight from a cask at the distillery and filled to order, so the outturn is tiny and no two batches are ever quite the same.

Bottled at a natural 54.1%, it is fresh and direct. The wood's lignin yields a clear vanilla, the oak lactones lend a creamy coconut, and cask lifts honey, citrus and orchard fruit over Oban's clear saline note. A thread of gentle smoke runs through a long, malty finish that opens with a drop of water.