Port Ellen Rare Malts Selection 22 Years Old 1978

A distillery bottling of Port Ellen matured to 22 year old, from 1978 and bottled at 60.5%. 4580 bottles in all. Port Ellen stood on Islay's rocky southern seaboard from its founding in 1825 until it was mothballed for good in 1983. The stills ran once more from 2024, but this whisky predates the revival.

Heavily peated malt, kilned over Islay peat, set the smoky tone and worked through copper pot stills by the sea, to lend the elegant, lightly medicinal smoke of the south shore. An American oak cask shaped it, lending only a light sweetness under the smoke. Well past twenty years the peat has mellowed to soft embers, the malt grown waxy and elegant. Years by the Atlantic give the malt its briny, oily weight. Its smoke leans citric and mineral rather than tarry and medicinal. The casks were filled before the stills fell silent in 1983.

At a natural 60.5% it is powerful and oily. A graceful Islay smoke runs over a waxy, briny lift, with a light vanilla from the refill oak. The texture is oily and coating, the smoke threaded with sea salt. The finish smoulders gently, oily and long. This is prized stock from a distillery reborn only in 2024.