Oban Distillery Exclusive Bottling Batch 03

This is Batch 03 of Oban's Distillery Only Bottling, a limited release aimed at visitors to the distillery, this run reaching 8520 bottles. The make comes from the small urban distillery in the seafront town of Oban in Argyll, founded in 1794 and among the smallest distilleries in Scotland, still running one small pair of stills.

The no age statement make was raised in soft ex-Bourbon American oak, the soft wood that shows the distillery character most plainly. The spirit is distilled slowly through the small lamp shaped stills and condensed through worm tubs run hot for copper contact outside the still house, the extended copper contact tempering it into Oban's rounded, fruity make. Released in a larger run than the first batch, it remains a visitor focused bottling, the kind of slightly higher strength expression a small distillery uses to give its shop something distinctive.

Bottled at 48%, slightly above the standard strength, it is fresh and coastal. The wood's lignin yields a clear vanilla, the wood lactones add coconut and cream, and the cask lifts honey, citrus and orchard fruit against Oban's clear saline note. A trace of gentle smoke carries a long, briny finish.