Port Ellen 4th Release

An official Port Ellen single malt, a 25 year old from 1978 and bottled at 56.2%. 5100 bottles in all. Port Ellen was founded in 1825 on Islay's rocky southern seaboard and mothballed for good in 1983. Annual Special Releases through Diageo sealed its mythic status.

Islay peat dried the malt, lending the spirit its coastal smoke, for a smoke more graceful than its Islay neighbours. The spirit was worked through copper pot stills by the sea. Refill ex-Bourbon casks held the spirit, the wood Port Ellen is most often found in. Well past twenty years the peat has mellowed to soft embers, the malt grown waxy and elegant. Long, cool maturation in Islay warehouses lets the smoke knit slowly with the oak. Each Diageo Special Release thinned a stock that could never be replaced. The maltings that survived the closure still supply barley across Islay today.

At cask strength 56.2% it is muscular. Soft coconut and vanilla from the oak, while a refined peat reek carries oily lemon, brine and a lanolin wax. It is elegant and deep, the peat folded into the malt. The close is slow, soft peat over wax. This is a vanishing dram from Islay's most storied closed distillery.