The story of Bruichladdich can be neatly separated into Before and After chapters. The “before” part spans the birth of the Islay distillery, in 1881, and snakes through myriad financial problems, closures, and acquisitions until it was mothballed, apparently for good, in 1994. The “after” part of the story is much more uplifting. Bruichladdich was restored, rebuilt and reborn in 2001 under the leadership of Mark Reynier and legendary distiller Jim McEwan. They, along with the current master distiller, Adam Hannett, transformed it into arguably the most innovative, quirky, and interesting distillery in all of Scotland, with groundbreaking whiskies like the ongoing Octomore, Port Charlotte, and Islay Barley series.
One of the norms Bruichladdich shattered was that a whisky had to be aged at least 10 years for it to be anywhere near full maturity, or for anyone to want to buy it. They put lie to that myth with extraordinary bottlings as young as five years old that showed brash youthfulness, sure, but undeniable complexity and depth. In other words, they tasted really good. The fact that Octomore could lay claim to being the world’s peatiest whisky — miraculously without tasting like an ashtray — was a big selling point as well.
But along with all the new stuff the self-described “Progressive Hebridian Distillers” were making, they’d also inherited, along with the distillery, a lot of aging casks from the Before Times, dating back to the mid ‘80s. Being able to blend and sell that whisky while waiting for the new stuff to become bottle-ready helped keep the brand afloat in the 2000s. Bruichladdich may have been a bad investment for its various parent companies in the 20th century, but it was always a good distillery, so its vintage stocks have become more in-demand as they’ve aged and supplies have dwindled.
The Bruichladdich Thirty was intended to be used in blends after aging for around five years. Things ... [+]
Bruichladdich finds itself at an interesting point in its journey. More than two decades into its current incarnation, they’ve got some pretty mature post-”renaissance” whisky at this point, but its past still a living memory, most notably in the Black Art series. The brand is celebrating both its Before and After times with the simultaneous release of Bruichladdich Eighteen and Bruichladdich Thirty (the numbers refer to their age statements), part of what they call their “Luxury Redefined” series.
The new Bruichladdich has been making whisky for 22 years as of February 2024, but they chose to release an 18 year old (the age of the youngest whisky in the blend) because it took a few years for the Bruichladdich we know today to settle into place. “We started growing barley in Islay,” current master distiller Adam Hannett told me, “and in 2004, the very first time we did it, to where we are today, where... half of the barley we use, we grow it locally — from zero, you know, 20 years ago — is incredible. And this is using some of that Islay barley from that very first distillation. It's using the very first organic spirit we ever distilled back in 2003. You know, people talk about organic whiskey today, or local provenance. So we can say, hey, we've been doing that for 18 years, here, taste it!”
Bruichladdich's Eighteen contains much of the "post-renaissance" history of the distillery in a ... [+]
And taste it you should. The Eighteen is aged mostly in ex-bourbon casks, with a smaller percentage of port and Sauternes casks, all of which are married for nine months before bottling. Flavor-wise, it shares the DNA of the no-age-statement flagship expression, The Classic Laddie, but it’s more intense and concentrated, with the light fruitiness of the Classic veering into more tropical fruit territory, namely mango. The oakiness gets more concentrated as well, with wisps of tobacco showing up amidst the wood. Bottled at 50% ABV, the Eighteen is a priced at a most reasonable suggested retail price of $179.99.
The Bruichladdich Thirty, on the other hand, is a wee bit more expensive, at a cool $1,999.99 a bottle. It contains some of the last spirit distilled at Bruichladdich before it was mothballed in 1994. At the time, Hannett says, there was a skeleton crew of 12 at the distillery making small amounts of whisky, almost all of which was intended for inclusion in blends rather than bottled as a single malt. “But the quality of what the team were doing, even though it was destined for blending, was incredible,” he notes. “And actually, when you look back through the ledgers at the distillery where they've been taking notes of the still times and how much grain is going in the mash tun and, all of these different things, you look back to those books and it's exactly the same as what we do today.”
To drink the Thirty is to imbibe liquid history, but provenance aside, it’s a terrific whisky. Aged entirely in ex-bourbon barrels and bottled at 43.2% ABV, it somehow manages to taste younger and sprightlier than the Eighteen, with, a bright fruitiness and just a touch of salinity — and surprisingly, not too much oak on the palate. It’s proof that, at its core, the thread of Bruichladdich’s history runs through the new distillery, no matter how much it’s changed in some respects.
Instead of the traditional cardboard boxes or tubes in which most whisky bottles are packaged, Bruichladdich and its parent company, Rémy Cointreau, have adopted a new, more environmentally friendly packaging. Called Colourform, the form-fitting packaging is made entirely from compostable paper pulp and is molded to fit the bottle. Reducing CO2 emissions AND standing out on a liquor store shelf sounds like a win-win. Most of us don’t buy whiskies for the packaging, of course, but it’s a plus to inadvertently help cut environmental waste while buying them for the yum and/or collectibility factor.
