Kilchoman Whisky Flight

Kilchoman is actually the first distillery on the island of Islay in over 124 years! Kilchoman’s founder, Anthony Wills, loves tradition (and great Scotch). He revived farm distillation, a lost art predating mass distilleries in the 1800s.

On that farm, they harvest Islay’s fertile grounds for barley before using the traditional floor-malting method. The barley is peated with ocean-soaked peat bogs, then mashed, fermented, and matured in bourbon barrels and sherry butts from the world-renowned Buffalo Trace distillery and Bodega Miguel Martin.

Oh, and this stuff’s the real deal: Kilchoman’s 100% Islay range remains the only Islay Single Malt produced completely on-site, from barley to bottle.

Kilchoman Sanaig Single Malt Scotch Whisky is a spirited ode to a babbling brook that meanders near the distillery. Aged in both ex-bourbon and Oloroso sherry casks, Sanaig offers a complex profile of peaty smoke intertwined with the sweetness of raisins and dark chocolate.

Kilchoman Machir Bay is the crown jewel of the Kilchoman fleet. A gold-medal champion that's as complex as it is captivating, Machir Bay charts a course through unchartered waters with its vatting of young spirits matured in bourbon casks and finished in Oloroso barrels. It’s an Islay Scotch, yes, but not as you know it.

Kilchoman Batch Strength is a titan among whiskies; matured in a mélange of re-charred red wine casks, Oloroso sherry butts, and bourbon barrels, melding the fiery zest of Kilchoman’s natural peat smoke with the opulent tapestry of dark fruits, rich spices, and salted caramel, all encased in a strength of 57% abv. 

Taste the heartbeat of a new era. Here’s to Islay’s young guns!

Smartass Corner

1) To be considered a Single Malt Scotch, a bottle may only contain whisky distilled from malted barley and produced at a single distillery.  

2) Good things come in small batches: Kilchoman is one of the smallest Scotch distilleries, producing around 120,000 liters a year. By comparison, Ardbeg—one of Islay’s most famous distilleries—pumps out over one million liters annually.

3) All they do is win, win, win: Kilchoman’s Machir Bay, a vatting of four and five-year-old bourbon cask matured and Oloroso-finished malt, was awarded a Gold Medal at the 2012 International Wine and Spirit Competition and named Whisky of the Year at the International Whisky Competition. 

4) “Sanaig” is the name of a little natural stream that runs by the distillery. And it makes sense for Kilchoman’s eponymous bottle—it tastes light and fresh without losing its peaty Islay character.

5) The island of Islay itself plays a large role in the taste of its whiskies. That’s because Islay is largely composed of peat. In fact, most of the water there has a brown-ish hue due to its abundance. But that’s not all—the winter gales that blow sea salt inland also factor into some of the briney notes you’ll find in their whiskies.

6) What exactly is peat? Peat is thousands of years’ worth of decaying vegetation, animals and moss which have evolved into layers that eventually form a bog. It grows at approximate 1mm per year, meaning a bog that’s one meter thick has been around for about a thousand years.

7) Ever heard someone say that got ‘blind drunk’? The term comes from the product of early whisky distilling practices. Brewers didn’t realize the beer they were condensing into liquor contained methanol, a raw form of antifreeze that made people blind.