Bruichladdich The Barley Exploration Collection

Bruichladdich is living proof that the traditional whisky regions of Scotland make no sense. Please don’t think that labelling a whisky “Islay” has anything to do with taste because the truth is far more complicated and interesting.

Built in 1881 when puffer-supplied coal was available as an alternative fuel to local peat, it is likely that Bruichladdich was specifically designed to produce the purest unpeated spirit possible. The great Alfred Barnard supports this view with a tantalising clue – the Laddie is the only distillery on Islay that he does not describe as drying its malt using peat in his fascinating exploration of the island’s distilleries in 1885.

Sadly, none of that 19th century spirit survives, but the original Victorian machinery has allowed an unparalleled legacy of craft distilling to trickle down through the generations of men who make this sophisticated Islay dram.

We salute them, not with bland homogeneity, but with a glorious palette of expressions that celebrate the range of possibilites of this, the world’s greatest spirit.

A special sampling set from Islay's Bruichladdich distillery, investigating the affect of barley type on the flavour of whisky. The set contains 200ml bottles of whisky distilled from organic barley, Bere barley – an ancient variety known for its spicy character – and Islay barley – grown just miles from the distillery. Bruichladdich are all about terroir, and this gives a fascinating insight into how changes to one of the key ingredients of whisky can ripple through the whole whisky-making process.

3 X 200 ML