The 2020 Club Release is here! Available exclusively to Club Members from 2pm (UK time) on Wednesday 18th Nov. If you aren’t a member already, click here to register.
Always keen to find something a bit different to our regular releases for the Club, we have found a series of very rare Kilchoman casks. This, the Ninth Edition, is a vatting of four fresh oloroso sherry hogsheads distilled in August 2012.
These casks were filled with our 100% Islay spirit, produced from publican barley grown and malted on site, however unlike other 100% Islay expressions these casks contained whisky distilled from unpeated Kilchoman malt. The reduced peat smoke flavours allow for light, fruity character to shine through. Interestingly, whilst the malted barley was unpeated, remnants of previous peated spirit runs create faint hints of smoke on the nose which complement the balance of rich fruit and citrus on the palate. Bottled at cask strength, 56.32% abv, there will be approximately 1,200 bottles available.
“We only filled a handful of casks with unpeated 100% Islay spirit over the past 15 years and it was always going to be fascinating how they developed differently from the usually peated malt. Although faint notes of peated spirit from the previous sprit runs can be found in the whisky, it is overridden on the palate with strong spice, bold fruits and coastal flavours” Anthony Wills, Kilchoman Founder and Master Distiller.
Approximately 1,200 bottles will be available at 2pm on Wednesday 18th November (UK time). Bottles will be priced at £99.60 per bottle (Incl. VAT, 70cl, 56.2% abv) limited to one bottle per person. For more information please email tours@kilchomandistillery.com or call (+44) 01496 850011
Join us for another ‘Whisky & Food Pairing Live Tasting’ on Thursday 26th November at 7pm.
Taste along with your Kilchoman Tasting Glass as we take you through our Core Range of whiskies, explaining how we make each whisky and what unique character and flavours can be found in each dram. You can order your whisky tasting packs from our online shop.
You’re welcome to join the live tasting with just the drams, however, you now have the chance to try something different. Over the last few months we have been pairing Kilchoman with a variety of fantastic foods from on our doorstep in Scotland! From highland venison to island cheese and west coast seafood, we have teamed up with some great Scottish producers to complement our whiskies.
For the tasting on the 26th November, we will be pairing Kilchoman with a variety of delicious chocolates! We will be changing the theme and having an international feel to this months tasting, collaborating with Edinburgh based company COCO who work with cacao farmers across Colombia. The cacao beans are processed into different chocolate products which travel all the way to Edinburgh where their team of chocolatiers works them into chocolate products. We have chosen; Salted Caramel Milk Chocolate, Colombian Dark 61% Chocolate, Isle of Skye Sea Salt & Lime Milk Chocolate and Haggis Spice Dark Chocolate to pair with Kilchoman.
For more information and to purchase the chocolate tasting pack click here to visit the COCO website and enter code kilchoman10 for a 10% discount.
Whisky Tasting Pack
Machir Bay – 46% (20ml) – Our signature peated single malt is a vatting of Kilchoman matured in a high proportion of bourbon casks with a small sherry cask influence.
Sanaig – 46% (20ml) – Although also matured in both sherry and bourbon casks, Sanaig has a high proportion of oloroso influence, giving a vastly different character to the whisky.
Loch Gorm 2020 – 46% (20ml) – The 2020 edition of Loch Gorm is a vatting of 21 oloroso sherry butts from 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2011.
100% Islay 9th Edition – 50% (20ml) – Distilled from our 2007 and 2009 barley crops, the 9th edition is a vatting of 43 ex-bourbon barrels matured for over 9 years in our on-site dunnage warehouses.
Kilchoman Tasting Glass
Our fourth and final limited edition of the year, the Fino Sherry Matured, will be available worldwide from this week.
The second of our Autumn releases comes in the form of a Fino Sherry Matured limited edition, our first global release of this cask type. The whisky has spent its full maturation in fino casks previously used by Bodega Miguel Martin in Spain, 11 fresh butts and 1 refill butt.
This release follows on from other limited-edition expressions using experimental cask maturations from Kilchoman, full term maturations in port, madeira, sauternes, red wine and STR cask types, amongst others. This particular release is limited to just 10,500 bottles worldwide.
Our core range of whiskies include oloroso sherry in their maturation, a medium-dry style of sherry which gives our whiskies a range of cooked and dried fruit influence. Fino differs from this by being a drier, more saline type of sherry which gives Kilchoman whisky layers of fragrant green apple, balancing beautifully with the citrus sweetness, cooked fruits and maritime peat smoke of our spirit.
“We have previously bottled a fino sherry matured release for our Kilchoman Club members but this will be a first global release. It’s exciting to have a new cask type available for the Kilchoman followers to taste. The fresh green apple character certainly adds a new element compared to what we’ve released before”
The Fino Sherry Matured is available from your regular Kilchoman stockist now. If it isn’t there yet, then it will be soon! Please get in contact with us if you have any questions about finding a bottle near you. A limited number of bottles will also be released via our website shop on Wednesday 14th at 2pm UK time (limited to one bottle per person) £74.52. 
Growing barley on Islay
Everyone that grows malting barley has their own challenges no matter where you are. We are fortunate in many ways as we have a fairly temperate climate on Islay as we are in the Gulf Stream but with any positive there is a negative and the Gulf Stream brings with it a lot of rain and wind compared to mainland barley growing areas in the central belt and north east Scotland.
When we plant the seed we are also looking for dry warm soils as this gives the barley the best opportunity to establish and sink deep roots into the ground which helps the plant to obtain nutrients and in drier months gives better access to water in the soil. When barley is growing it requires a mix of sunshine and rain to maximise its potential but sometimes it feels like the rain is never ending and wet damp weather impacts on yield. But for us, the most important factor is how well the barley distils and the quality of the spirit it produces.
Why we grow barley on the farm
Islay has some fertile areas suitable for barley production with a strong farming heritage and traditionally barley would have been grown for cattle feed and for use in whisky production. As distilling became more regulated, and the distilleries began to increase in size in the early 1900’s, there would not have been enough ground available that was capable of barley production for their needs and barley would have been brought to the island to meet this demand.
One of Anthony’s aims when he decided to build a distillery was to take distilling back to its traditional roots where possible and it was high on his list of priorities that the farm should be able to provide barley for the production process. The farm currently supplies enough barley for around 20% of our production requirements. Growing our own barley has many benefits. Not only do we get to choose the varieties of barley which we grow, we also get to decide the acreages planted meaning that we can experiment with different varieties and even plant these in the same fields side by side so we compare them with each other. This control gives Anthony the opportunity to distil batches of different varieties of barley and see what effect variety has on the spirit character. It also allows further experimentation by varying peating levels, yeast varieties and the effects these changes have on the flavour profile of the spirit from different varieties of barley. It enables us to fully explore the potential of each variety we grow. We do not grow barley for the highest yield or because it is easy, we grow barley on Islay to give you the most authentic Islay dram that we can – from barley grown on our farm, malted, distilled, matured and bottled at the farm is what we mean by Single Farm Single Malt.
Harvest 2020
This year 97.5 acres were sown with two varieties – Concerto (80 acres) and Diablo (17.5 acres). Concerto is our main stay variety and usually provides us with a good crop of barley and distils a very good quality spirit.
Diablo was chosen as our experimental variety this year. In our opinion, and from what was seen on the farm, there were slightly less grains in the ear, usually around 4 less than Concerto, and the grains were not as large. The straw unfortunately did not stand up as well due to the weather and combining proved to be more difficult. This is not to say that we are disappointed with this variety. We will truly see what we have when we distil Diablo and we can see what character the spirit has.
For us 2020 proved to be challenging due to a very long dry spell in the spring that effected the germination and despite the weather being dry we had a cold wind and little rain. The weather then changed and we seemed to have nothing but rain from the end of May well into June. In July and August we had a mixed bag of weather with no real settled period of good weather and the temperatures were not particularly high. The barley was ready for harvest around the 24th August but due to the weather we had to wait until the 31st August to get the combine going. Eventually the good weather returned and stayed with us and allowed us to get the harvest in. We look forward comparing the characteristics of the spirit when we distil the two barley varieties from this year. We will keep you updated!
Our 100% Islay limited edition release is produced entirely on one farm, from barley to bottle. For more information click here.
In celebration of 15 years since Kilchoman Distillery was established on Islay, we are auctioning 15 individual casks of Kilchoman! It will be a rare chance to own a private cask of Kilchoman with only a small number of casks being offered in the first years of production. Since then we have greedily kept hold of almost every cask for our own bottlings as we soon realised there was not enough to share around.
These 15 casks will be auctioned in batches of 5 casks until the end of 2020, the first of these 5 casks were auctioned in June and the next 5 casks will open for bidding at 13:00 on Thursday 24th September. This time around it’s all about Single Farm Single Malt! All 5 casks in the second batch of the auction will be filled with spirit produced from barley both grown and malted at Kilchoman.
The casks include a Bourbon barrel, Oloroso Sherry hogshead, Pedro Ximénez hogshead, Ruby Port octave and a Calvados hogshead. All the information on the individual casks (volume, spirit type, barley variety, etc) and how to place your bid can be found in the Cask Auction page.
The auction is hosted on the Kilchoman website and you will need to set up an account before registering to bid on the 5 casks. This is separate from your Kilchoman Club account and different login details will be needed here. Once you are all set up and registered you are free to bid away!
The auction for the second batch of 5 casks will end on the 1st October in one hour intervals from 12:00, however if a bid is placed within the last 5 minutes of the auction, an extra 5 minutes will be added. This is to help avoid missing out with any last second bids and any group consulting that is needed.
Happy bidding to you all and good luck!
September 2020 marks the release of our 10th annual edition of our 100% Islay range. The unique Single Farm Single Malt is the only whisky in Scotland to be produced entirely on one farm, from barley to bottle.
We spoke to Anthony Wills, Kilchoman Founder and Managing Director, to find out more about the latest limited edition release and why it is so special.
What makes the 100% Islay release so special?
What makes the 100% Islay release so special to the distillery is that we do the whole process here on the farm. We grow the barley in the fields surrounding the distillery then we malt, distil, mature and finally bottle it all on site. We are the only distillery producing whisky that does the whole process on site and we’re very proud of that. It is special because we are looking after every process right the way through to you enjoying it when you raise a glass. It is one of the main reasons for starting the distillery, we could have a unique selling point and 100% Islay embraces that completely.
Tell us about this year’s release
We release the 100% Islay on an annual basis and this is the 10th edition. It is older than previous releases at nine years of age. This is the second time we’ve used a bit of oloroso sherry cask maturation in the vatting. In the past most of them have been 100% matured in first fill bourbon casks but we have filled oloroso sherry casks on an annual basis for the 100% Islay and this year you will see the colour is richer and darker and there is a little more weight and body on the palate. I am delighted with it, it has worked really well and it still has all that lovely zesty vibrancy with a little bit of weight from the sherry casks that we’ve used.
Which barley varieties were used in the 2020 release?
The barley varieties used in this edition, the 10th edition, are now printed on the packaging. In this edition we used the varieties Optic & Publican. These were two varieties that were used throughout the industry in those years – 2009, 2008 & 2007. I am a great believer that barley varieties do play a part in the character of the spirit and we’ve done a few experiments here and I’ve been talking about how important and how different the barley varieties can be at the spirit stage. But I think it is important to also realise that once the spirit goes into casks and matures for five, ten, fifteen years, those differences narrow right down. It’s great to talk about it but I think it is difficult to really start arguing that case once you have it in bottle. We’ve done various experiments here over the last few years and we’ve sown different varieties and distilled them separately and will release them separately and it’s all part of our programme of experimentation.
Would you consider a higher PPM or no peating in the 100% Islay release?
The average PPM of our 100% Islay releases tends to be between 15 to 20ppm. We are starting to be able to experiment a little bit more with our peating levels with our 100% Islay barley and that is because of the new still house being completed about 14 months ago. It will allow us to distil completely separately and now the guys are on site five days a week, 24 hours a day, so it therefore allows us to do longer peatings. We’ve already done an unpeated variety. For two months we did an unpeated 100% Islay barley and we look forward to seeing how that performs in a few years time. We’re also going to do longer peating, so maybe 48 hours or more to see what we can do with that and how that will influence the character of the 100% Islay release.
Can you give an overview of your tasting notes?
It is beautifully rich in colour and that is the influence from the sherry casks. It has lovely light, vibrant, citrus notes. And then on the back of the palate the peat and smoke come through but on a very light basis. It doesn’t have the same strength of peat as our other releases and at 50% abv it’s great without water.
How is this year’s harvest going?
The harvest this year has been a bit disrupted by the weather unfortunately. It was all looking great a few weeks ago. We’ve had pretty good weather actually throughout the summer and the barley was ripening really well and we thought we could go to harvest reasonably early, earlier than we normally do. We actually started on Monday the 31st August but we only got four or five hours before the rain came and the weather has been very unsettled ever since. It’s looking a bit better for next week so hopefully we can get back to it because if we can’t then it’s going to be a bit of a struggle to get the barley off in good quality and to get the yields that we are looking for. At the moment the barley grains are looking really ripe and plump but if this rain continues then the quality will dip somewhat.
Have they finally let you drive the combine?
Well I’ve always been asked if I’ve driven the combine and I always tell everyone that I’m going to drive the combine but Andrew manages to keep it quiet when he goes and does the harvest but I’ve said it’s a piece of cake, it’s not as complicated as everyone makes out. It’s just like mowing the lawn, drive it in a straight line, keep within the tram lines and away you go! So hopefully I will get a go at it next week when we get going and that will probably annoy Andrew!
100% Islay, Single Farm Single Malt
Our latest 100% Islay limited edition will be available worldwide from this week. The unique Single Farm Single Malt is the only whisky in Scotland to be produced entirely on one farm, from barley to bottle.
Distilled from Optic and Publican barley varieties grown at Kilchoman in 2007, 2009 and 2010, the barley was then malted onsite and peated using local Islay peat before being distilled, matured and eventually bottled all within the farm distillery’s limits.
This, the 10th annual edition of the range was matured in a combination of 39 bourbon barrels and 2 oloroso sherry butts for a minimum of 9 years. Just 12,400 bottles will be released with each cask personally selected for the release by distillery founder, Anthony Wills.
“Our 100% Islay whiskies are special, they both reflect the traditions of Scotch whisky production and examine the increasing interest in the detail of how single malt is made.
With our 100% Islay range we control every element of the whisky-making process ourselves, from barley variety through to individual casks selected for bottling. It means we are able to adapt our methods and inputs to maximise the character of the whisky in the glass.
The Optic and Publican varieties used for the 10th Edition, paired with a light peat smoking, long fermentation and high spirit cut creates a bright, floral nose of citrus sweetness that gives way to prunes, cinnamon and cooked apples & pears on the palate. The finish brings waves of mildly spiced peat smoke, lasting sweetness and rich sherry notes”
The 100% Islay 10th Edition will retail for £71.94 in the UK (70cl, 50% abv), a limited number of bottles will be available via our website from 2pm on Wednesday 16th, however these will be restricted to one bottle per person.
If you miss out on a bottle when they’re released on our website then don’t worry, bottles will be on shelves around the world soon.
More great news and another gold award! Machir Bay has won a gold award in the ‘2020 Whiskies of the World Awards’.
The ‘Whiskies of the World Awards’ is a worldwide whisky competition produced in conjunction with the International Wine & Spirits Competition, the largest, most prestigious and longest running spirits competition in the world.
Machir Bay is part of our core range and available throughout the world. Named after the stunning beach next to the distillery, Machir Bay is a vatting of Kilchoman matured in approximately 90% bourbon barrels and 10% oloroso sherry. The high proportion of bourbon barrels create a distinct balance of classic Islay character and fresh floral complexity.
For more information about Machir Bay click here
We know Anthony Wills, Kilchoman Founder & Managing Director, likes to experiment, latest trials include different strains of yeast, planting different barley varieties and particularly playing with various cask types, now he has a new project on the go!
We have recently taken delivery of two ex-red wine oak vats all the way from the Douro Valley in Portugal. Dias is the cooperage that we already buy a number of our experimental casks from and being offered these vats was an opportunity we couldn’t turn down.
Each vat has a capacity of 6,000 bulk litres and they have both now been filled with nineteen first fill bourbon barrels from 2016. The vats have been coopered to our specification which involved shaving, toasting and re-charring the interior. One vat has been lightly toasted while the other has a medium toast. We hope to see subtle differences in the character and colour of the whisky due to the different toasting levels, but only time will tell!
The two experimental vats will now rest in our newest warehouse where Anthony and the team will regularly rummage the spirit and keep an eye (and taste) on how things develop. Anthony predicts that maturation will be slower in the vats due to their size but it will be interesting to see what happens. We will keep you updated!
Join us for another ‘Whisky & Food Pairing Live Tasting’ on Thursday 17th September at 7pm.
Taste along with your Kilchoman Tasting Glass as we take you through our Core Range of whiskies, explaining how we make each whisky and what unique character and flavours can be found in each dram.
You’re welcome to join the live tasting with just the drams, however, you now have the chance to try something different. Over the next few months we will be pairing Kilchoman with a variety of fantastic foods, and where better to look than on our doorstep in Scotland! From highland venison to island cheese and west coast seafood, we’ll be teaming up with some great Scottish producers to complement our whiskies.
For the tasting on the 17th September, we will be pairing a selection of cheeses from Isle of Mull Cheese, a family run business on Sgiob-ruadh Farm. Similarly to whisky making being a long standing tradition within Scotland, so too is cheese making and this tradition is still very much alive on the Isle of Mull. Being a small family run business, Isle of Mull Cheese have complete control over their production enabling them to ensure the highest quality cheese is produced for customers. All of the cheese is made with unpasteurised milk from their hardy, healthy, island cows fed on grass and whisky grains from the Tobermory Distillery.
To find out more about Isle of Mull Cheese and to order your Cheese Tasting Pack click HERE. Isle of Mull Cheese are kindly offering a 10% discount for Kilchoman whisky fans to use on all products available on their online shop. Use the code KILCHOMAN to claim your discount. *(Orders should be placed by 12th September).
The tasting will be broadcast live on Facebook and Youtube at 7pm UK time on Thursday 17th September. We hope you can pour yourself a dram and join us and please send in your questions and comments during the tasting. Recordings will be available afterwards for anyone who would like to catch up at a later time.
Kilchoman Tasting Pack (on sale HERE) includes –
Machir Bay – 46% (20ml) – Our signature peated single malt is a vatting of Kilchoman matured in a high proportion of bourbon casks with a small sherry cask influence.
Sanaig – 46% (20ml) – Although also matured in both sherry and bourbon casks, Sanaig has a high proportion of oloroso influence, giving a vastly different character to the whisky.
Loch Gorm 2020 – 46% (20ml) – The 2020 edition of Loch Gorm is a vatting of 21 oloroso sherry butts from 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2011.
100% Islay 9th Edition – 50% (20ml) – Distilled from our 2007 and 2009 barley crops, the 9th edition is a vatting of 43 ex-bourbon barrels matured for over 9 years in our on-site dunnage warehouses.
Kilchoman Tasting Glass
