Bunnahabhain 2014 hand-filled, Canasta Butt #2746

THE HOLY SPIRITS VIEW
A distillery exclusive that normally never leaves Islay: Bunnahabhain’s hand-filled single cask series, bottled at the distillery shop by the visitor team. Cask #2746 is a 2014 Canasta sherry butt at a full-bore 61%. Young on paper, but deeply sherried and surprisingly mature in the glass, and a rare chance to taste Bunnahabhain’s unpeated spirit with no filter between you and the cask.
 
THE DISTILLERY
Bunnahabhain sits at the end of a single-track road on Islay’s north-eastern shore, looking across the Sound of Islay to Jura. Founded in 1881, it draws water from the Margadale Spring and makes an unpeated, maritime, soft-edged style, the outlier on an island famed for smoke.
 
THE WHISKY: 2014 HAND FILLED, CANASTA BUTT #2746
Distilled in 2014 and matured around six years in a single Canasta sherry butt, then hand-filled at the distillery (the “Maturation Warehouse” series, available only at Bunnahabhain’s own shop). Natural cask strength, 61% ABV, non-chill filtered, no added colour. Unpeated.
 
TASTING NOTES
Prunes, toasted brown sugar, raisins straight off, brown sauce, pipe tobacco, a thread of herbal honey. Dark chocolate, liquorice, black pepper, blackberries building with air. Palate deep, oily, dark sherry, caramelised sugar and baking spice, voluminous and far older than six years would suggest, hot at first and settling quickly. Finish long, sweet and peppery, tobacco and cocoa fading slowly. Dense, powerful, richly sherried. A proper dram for sherry cask lovers.
 
Serve: Neat, in a Glencairn glass, with a few drops of water to calm the strength and open the fruit.