Port Cask Finish (700 ml)

When Harold Currie, former Managing Director of Chivas Brothers, revived legal distillation on Arran in 1995 after a 160-year island silence, he made a deliberate transgression: no peat, no maritime brine, no concession to island-whisky convention. The Port Cask Finish is that philosophy taken to its logical extreme — a clean, orchard-driven spirit pushed into Port wood to amplify sweetness rather than mask it.

Lochranza Distillery sits in Glen Eason Biorach ('Valley of the Sharp Waterfalls') on granite-dominant terrain north of the Highland Boundary Fault. Water descends from Loch na Davie through six waterfalls, purified by granite and softened by trace peat, arriving at the mash tun exceptionally soft — a direct contributor to the distillery's characteristically delicate, cereal-clean new make.

Concerto-variety Scottish barley is fermented for 60–75 hours in Oregon pine washbacks using Kerry M yeast — the extended fermentation window deliberately targeted to build fruity ester congeners before double distillation through tall-necked, long-lyne-arm copper pot stills (wash stills 7,100 L; spirit stills 4,300–4,800 L), all steam-heated with shell-and-tube condensers.

New make is collected at ~68% ABV. Primary maturation in ex-bourbon and/or ex-sherry refill casks is followed by a Port cask finish, layering dark berry and dried plum character over the house's signature citrus-and-apple core. Bottled at 46% ABV, non-chill filtered, no caramel colouring — parameters Arran holds across virtually its entire range.

The special feature: among Islands malts, Arran's pioneering use of exotic wine-cask finishes in the early 2000s helped normalise the practice industry-wide — this expression is a direct descendant of that original rule-breaking impulse, delivered without the smoky camouflage most island producers rely on.