Lochlea on peat

Lochlea Distillery is located in Ayrshire, south of Glasgow, and boasts, among other things, that the farmhouse where it was founded was once home for a time to Robert Burns, one of Scotland's most famous poets. Among other works, to Robert Burns we owe the original of the song, known in our country as "The fire is already catching up with the glow" (in the original "Old Lang Syne"), and to the Lochlea distillery for proving that it is not at all necessary to dazzle the community of whisky lovers with information about construction plans, progress and the planned opening of the. Lochlea only came to prominence in the minds of Scotch whisky enthusiasts when it announced the market debut of its whisky.

In recent days, there has been information about the interesting launch of Lochlea. About a week ago, the world was abuzz with the news of the launch of the Peat Edition. Lochlea Ploughing Edition (First Crop) is a whisky with no age declaration, matured in a combination of Islay peated whisky casks and peated quarter cask casks. These barrels were personally selected by the production director at Lochlea, John Campbell. Thus, it can be assumed - after an old acquaintance - that these casks were previously used for maturing Laphroaig. For many years, after all, John Campbell was the manager of this very distillery on the island of Islay.

Lochlea Ploughing Edition, which is the ploughing season edition, is the last edition of the whisky, which is part of a series of limited editions under the common name First Crop, bottled at different times of the year, according to the rhythm of the work of a traditional farm. Previously, we have seen Sowing Edition, or sowing time whisky (March 2022), Harvest Edition, or harvest time whisky (September 2022), and Fallow Edition, or fallow season whisky (November 2022). Limited editions have been announced for 2023 under the common name Second Crop.

Lochlea Ploughing Edition is a whisky whose bouquet features notes of roasted fruits and delicate peat smoke. On the taste, on the other hand, we can expect accents of fruit landraces, baked apples and Brazil nuts. 11,000 bottles have been released, each costing £50 at retail.

The new whisky from Lochlea is one example where a distillate prepared using non-peaty malt is matured (or finished, as is sometimes the case) in barrels in which a strongly peaty, smoky whisky was previously matured. A similar procedure was once used by Balvenie, but also by the Welsh town of Penderyn, to name just these two. For John Campbell, on the other hand, it was the first time he had to deal with peaty accents in the whisky he makes since leaving the Laphroaig distillery and the Isle of Islay a little over a year ago.

Lochlea is one of a string of new distilleries that have sprung up in Scotland over the past decade, capitalizing on the unprecedented popularity of Scotch whisky and the subsequent demand for the products of the Scottish distilling industry. It was launched in 2018. Between 2015 and 2020, Isle of Harris, Isle of Raasay, Lindores Abbey and Torabhaig, among others, were built. The new distilleries are mostly small-scale, artisanal operations with small capacities. Exceptions among them are the modern Dalmunach, Ailsa Bay or Roseisle style molochs, owned by large producers, designed to produce primarily distillates for the purpose of composing blends by individual producers. Lochlea's maximum potential output is 200,000. liters of pure alcohol per year, while for Roseisle (Diageo) the figure is 12.5 million liters of.


[20.01.2023 / photo: Lochlea]