Sales Launch of »Am Bùrach«

Today, May 28th, the Kilchoman Open Day at the virtual Fèis Ìle 2020, was not only marked by a multitude of excellent online contributions from the distillery, but also by the official sales launch of the second Limited Release of 2020: Am Bùrach.

Behind the mysterious sounding name is the story of an accident. In 2014, an operating error on the valves of the two vatting tanks used by Kilchoman to marry the casks of the major releases caused the contents of the two tanks to mix. One was currently holding a batch of Machir Bay, the other was holding Kilchoman’s first Port Wine Release announced for 2014. Anthony Wills was anything but enthusiastic about the incident, his “what a mess” was translated into Gaelic by General Manager Islay Heads as “Am Bùrach”, giving the whole thing at least a poetic sounding name. Anyway, this involuntary blend was of course too good to be thrown away and so it was decided to fill it back into bourbon barrels and store it again to decide later what to do with it. By the way, the Port Wine Release was released in 2014 in a much smaller edition than announced, obviously there weren’t that many port wine barrels left now.

After 6 years of storage Anthony Wills found that the conflicting character of Machir Bay and Port had married nicely. However, he decided a 6 month finish in 100 litre Ruby Port casks to enhance the fruity character.

Soon we will be able to taste a whisky that has been aged for over 9 years in an unusual mixture of Bourbon, Port and Oloroso sherry casks. We can be curious about the result.

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