Kilchoman Limited Edition for Land Rover (2015)

Cask type: Ex-Bourbon Barrels & Oloroso Sherry Casks

Vintage: 2005 – 2012

Date Bottled: 9.7.2015

Age: by definition 3 yo

Strength: 58,2 % abv

Number of bottles: 50

Bottle volume: 0,7 l

Bottle code: LDROV 9/7/15

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This extremely rare Kilchoman bottling was released in 2015 to mark the end of production of the Land Rover Defender in Solihull, England. After an uninterrupted production period of 67 years, production finally ceased on 29 January 2016, after a total of just over two million Land Rover Series and Defender models had been built.

It is a little-known fact that the island of Islay has played an important role in the development of Land Rover since the 1940s. Spencer Wilks, then managing director of the Rover Group, owned the Laggan Estate on the island and used it for the development and testing of off-road vehicles. In 1947, the local gamekeeper saw him driving across the island in a heavily modified Rover and remarked: ‘That must be a Land Rover, sir’. The name stuck. This development culminated in the introduction of the Land Rover Series 1 at the Amsterdam Motor Show in 1948.

There is also a personal connection between Rover and the Kilchoman Distillery: Kathy Wills, the wife of Kilchoman founder Anthony Wills, is the granddaughter of Spencer Wilks.

So it’s no wonder that the company turned to Kilchoman when it was looking for a special whisky bottling to honour Land Rover’s history. Since only 50 bottles were needed, Kilchoman did not create a special release for this, but rather diverted a small part of the Kilchoman 10th Anniversary Release, which had been released to mark the distillery’s 10th anniversary on 23 May 2015. It is a vatting of sherry and bourbon casks filled between 2005 and 2012 and even contains a small amount from cask no. 1/2005, the first cask ever filled by Kilchoman.

This bottling should not be confused with the Pedro Ximénez Small Batch for Land Rover released by Kilchoman in 2023.

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