Bunnahabhain 24 Years Old 2002 (Phil & Simon Thompson)

Phil and Simon Thompson built their independent bottling label alongside the running of Dornoch Distillery, a small Highland operation that ferments long, distils slowly and lays down spirit in unusual casks. The bottlings released under their own name reflect the same approach: they go after stocks the bigger merchants tend to overlook, and they release them with minimal intervention. This 24 year old Bunnahabhain is one of those finds, drawn from a single cask that yielded 193 bottles at 52.1% natural strength. The cask history is unusual for the age. Spirit distilled in 2002 spent fourteen years in its initial cask, then was racked into a Madeira barrique for a full decade of secondary maturation. That ten-year stay is closer to a re-maturation than a finish, and it explains the depth of fortified-wine character the cask has pushed into the spirit. Madeira ages oxidatively in dunnage; the wine residue left in the staves carries rancio, baked stone fruit and mineral acidity into anything subsequently filled into the cask. The Thompsons' own notes describe rancio laced with black tea and liquorice root, dried figs, balsamic onions and orange peel on the palate, with a long, polite finish of prune and honeyed ham. Bunnahabhain's naturally oily, lightly maritime spirit gives the whisky structure underneath all that wine intensity, and the acidity of the Madeira lifts the sweetness rather than letting it sit heavy. Bottled non-chill-filtered at natural colour.