Port Ellen 1982 40yo

New editions of Port Ellen do not hit the market very often, so each one is worth noting.

Hunter Laing, an independent bottler based at the Ardnahoe distillery on the island of Islay, has just entered the second phase of the Eidolon project, in which he intends to show the world three editions of whiskies from this legendary distillery.

When in the early 1980s. In the 1970s, the first symptoms appeared, the grandfather of brothers Hunter and Douglas Laing secured some of the last barrels of the extinct distillery. These barrels lay undisturbed, waiting for better times, and for the whisky they contained to reach perfection. In late 2019, Hunter Laing announced the launch of three Port Ellen editions under the common name Eidolon. It was then bottled Port Ellen 1983 36yo, 53.5% vol. The entire edition consisted of 639 bottles at the time, and the price of a single bottle was £2,500.

Hunter Laing has just announced the release of the second installment of the described trilogy. This time we are dealing with Port Ellen from the 1982 vintage, bottled as cask strength, or in this case 56.5% vol., as a 40-year-old beverage, and the whisky was enough to fill only 403 bottles of. This time the price of a single bottle is already £4,500.

As with the first edition, this time, too, the manufacturer is silent on the type of cask from which the whisky came, the number of casks used to put together the coupage, or other information about the contents of each bottle. No information has also been revealed regarding the third planned Port Ellen edition of the Eidolon series.

Port Ellen was one of the victims of the overproduction crisis that hit the Scottish distilling industry in the 1980s. In the 1990s, and which resulted in a drastic reduction in production at most distilleries and the cessation of production at many of them. For dozens it was a judgment, as the halted production was never restarted, and in many cases the plant was liquidated, the buildings demolished or adapted for other purposes. Among the distilleries closed and eventually liquidated without a trace were two of the three Inverness plants, Glen Albyn and Glen Mhor. New life was given to the Millburn buildings, also in Inverness, or Glenlochy in Fort William. For years, you can seek rest after the hardships of exploring Scotland on their doorstep. They have been converted into a hotel and guesthouse. Dallas Dhu in Forres (Speyside) has been turned into a museum of Scottish distilling, and Convalmore in Dufftown (Speyside) has been turned into warehouses to mature Glenfiddich whisky.

Brora (Northern Highlands), Rosebank (Lowlands) and Port Ellen (Islay) were more fortunate. On the wave of unprecedented popularity of Scotch whisky over the past two decades, the decision was made to rebuild and relaunch them. In the case of Brora, the process ended in May 2021, when a barrel of fresh distillate was rolled into the distillery's warehouse for the first time since 1983. Construction and installation work at Rosebank and Port Ellen is at a very advanced stage and can be expected to restart almost literally any day now.


[14.03.2023 / Photo: Hunter Laing]