Ledaig 2005 WM (Wilson & Morgan)

A Ledaig single malt, selected and bottled by Wilson & Morgan, aged 12 year old from 2005, drawn from cask 800073-74 and bottled at 57%. 587 bottles in all. Ledaig is the peated malt made at Tobermory on Mull, a distillery founded as Ledaig in 1798. The distillery was founded in 1798 by John Sinclair, a local kelp merchant, as the Ledaig distillery.

The spirit was run through the distillery's boil ball stills from peated barley, to build the medicinal, briny Ledaig character. Ex-Sherry wood added dried fruit to the smoky spirit. Past a decade the smoke softens, the soot and brine settling over ripe fruit. Peat smoke and active oak settle together over the years, the smoke softening as the fruit deepens. The distillery's history is broken by long silences; its buildings once stored a local cheddar. Burn Stewart revived production in 1993, and Distell bought the distillery in 2013.

At a full 57% it is intense and layered. Soot, sea salt and a sweet fruit, and the Oloroso lends raisin, walnut and a dried fruit richness. Beneath the smoke run brine, tar and a sweet fruit. The close is long, smoke over a sweet fruit. This is the peated island malt of Mull.