Product description
The Kinship Collection debuted at the 2017 Fèis Ìle festival and celebrated the groundbreaking of Hunter Laing & Co.’s Ardnahoe Distillery.
It consisted of six single malts from the Isle of Islay, and the person of the selector Jim McEwan, the director of production at the new distillery, is the best guarantor of the quality of the whisky. The series labels refer to six aspects of whisky production – harvesting, malting, fermenting, distilling, maturing and bottling. The Laphroaig 20 years old presented here was released a year later, also at the festival. The whisky spent two decades in two refill hogshead casks, and was bottled at cask strength (55.2% abv) in an edition of 470 bottles. (Jim McEwan's tasting note.)
"You would think that 20 years spent in a barrel would tame the beast from the south of the island, but nothing like that, it constantly attacks with a squall, bursts with clouds of smoke, leaving behind the smell of fatty smoked herrings, wet sand and a pile of seaweed washed ashore. Soothing is brought by tarred ropes, iodine and the smoke of burning peat bogs, notes of pine needles, licorice and a leather tobacco pouch. Only after a while do cinnamon and cloves, lemon drops, anise, eucalyptus, honey, vanilla, grapefruit and a touch of mint come to the fore. Such a metamorphosis borders on magic and warms the heart like the heat of peat on a stormy night."