Arran Sauternes 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 — a clean, fruit-forward Highland style on an island where convention demanded otherwise. That founding philosophy is what makes the Sauternes Cask Finish possible. Lochranza Distillery sits in Glen Eason Biorach ('Valley of the Sharp Waterfalls') in Arran's granite-dominant north, drawing water from Loch na Davie through six cascades of the Easan Biorach burn — granite-filtered, peat-softened, exceptionally soft — a water profile that drives the distillery's characteristically clean, citrus-bright new make. Double distillation through tall-necked wash stills (7,100 L) and bulb-shaped spirit stills (4,300–4,800 L) with long lyne arms and shell-and-tube condensers, combined with 60–75-hour fermentations using Kerry M yeast in Oregon pine washbacks, builds the ester-rich, orchard-fruit congener base that Sauternes finishing amplifies rather than masks. Primary maturation in refill ex-bourbon American oak is followed by a Sauternes cask finish — the botrytised sweetness and waxy lanolin texture of the French dessert-wine wood layering apricot preserve and honeyed citrus over the distillery's native green apple and lime. Bottled at 46% ABV, non-chill filtered, no caramel colouring — a bottling standard Arran applies across virtually its entire range, unusual for a producer at this price point. The Gulf Stream microclimate at Lochranza accelerates maturation, meaning the wood integration here is denser than the age might suggest on a mainland distillery.