Bunnahabhain 14 Years Old (Fèis Ìle 2024)

Fèis Ìle is the annual Islay Festival of Music and Malt, held each May and June across the island's distilleries, with each producer taking a day to host visitors and release a special bottling for the festival. Bunnahabhain released two bottlings for Fèis Ìle 2024: a 23 year old Triple Sherry Wood Finish celebrating the distillery's classical sherried style, and this 14 year old Ruby Port Cask Finish, a deliberate twist on the house style.

The cask programme runs in two specific stages. Spirit was filled into bourbon casks on 26 May 2009 and held there for eleven years before being transferred into ruby port hogsheads on 17 November 2020 for a three-year finish. The long bourbon-cask base provides vanilla, light coconut and toasted-corn lactones from the American oak; ruby port casks then layer dense red-fruit weight on top during the finish, with the wine residue's tannin structure adding drying grip alongside the cherry, plum and raspberry markers that ruby port carries.

Distillery tasting notes describe an initial burst of dark chocolate fading into toasted oak, cherries, plums, raspberries and caramelised walnuts on the nose, with cinnamon, nutmeg, redcurrants and pomegranate against sweet malt on the palate, and a long cocoa-and-spice finish. The Bunnahabhain underlying coastal character runs underneath the wine sweetness rather than getting buried, with the spirit's natural oiliness carrying the layered dual-cask structure. Festival exclusive, natural colour, non-chill-filtered.