Torabhaig Taigh

Torabhaig is the newest distillery on the Isle of Skye, the island's second after Talisker and the first to be built there in some 190 years. It was opened in 2017 by Mossburn Distillers in a restored farmstead at Teangue on the Sleat peninsula, the old steading built in the 1820s from the stones of nearby Castle Camus. Taigh, Gaelic for house, is the distillery's House Style, the everyday face of its peated single malt.

Torabhaig is heavily peated, the barley carrying a high phenol load, but the distillery tempers that smoke through its fermentation and distillation so it never overwhelms. Water comes from two island burns, the Allt Breacach and the Allt Gleann. This bottling was matured chiefly in ex-Bourbon oak with a Madeira cask adding a layer of sweeter fruit, and bottled at 46 percent without chill filtration or added colour.

On the palate a coastal peat smoke meets lemon, vanilla and the raisined sweetness of the Madeira, with a struck flint minerality and a fresh sea breeze. The smoke is firm but balanced, the fruit and citrus given room to show. A fine introduction to the well tempered peat of Skye's young second distillery. The smoke carries that woody, struck flint note the distillery's barley is known for, set against a clean coastal freshness.