Whisky: Ledaig “Unpeated” 26 Year (1995), Thompson Brothers

Country/Region: Scotland/Islands

ABV: 44.7%

Cask: Refill Hogshead

Age: 26 Years (Distilled 5 Sept. 1995, Bottled May 2022)

Nose: Citrus and minerals with subtle layers of maritime and cream notes. A melange of preserved, bruised, and slightly rotted lemons, limes, and pineapples met the subtle salty-mineral water of a spring-fed tide pool warmed by the late afternoon sun. Hints of melon popsicles, vanilla cola, and lemonade combined with the vague impression of swimming pool chemicals and green grass.

Palate: Light-bodied, oily, citrus syrup and shaved coconut, summer garden, green grass, moss, danker and more vegetal with time, swimming pool, hints of the sea or a kiss of salt, wrought iron in the sun.

Finish: Long and lingering, slightly drying, herbal tea, green grass, preserved citrus.

Score: 8

Mental Image: You Are My Sunshine, My Only Sunshine

Narrative & Notes: I poured this as dram #22 on a "Holiday Mystery Whisky Advent Calendar" and guessed it was a twenty-something Ledaig or Tobermory. The slightly funky background cream on the nose and intriguing tropical fruits all had me thinking: Ledaig. The subtle maritime influence provided additional evidence, though as the notes were quiet and restrained, I imagined it must have been very mature.

I got another one correct! I have gone 4 for 22 in correctly identifying the distillery. I take some solace because I have also encountered three distilleries for the first time and had my backup/alternative guesses correct a few times.

A few months ago, some friends in Japan's whisky scene went a bit crazy, or so I thought, over some "unpeated Ledaig," and I could not quite grasp what they meant. If you are like me, then you read "unpeated Ledaig" and either went, "what the heck is that" or "how is that not just Tobermory?" Or maybe a little bit of both.

A friend relayed the explanation he obtained from an independent bottler who handled a sibling cask. It turns out that when Tobermory switches production from peated to unpeated spirit, they run a few "dirty" distillations of unpeated malt fermented in the style of Ledaig, which picks up the residual phenols in the still. As the malt ends up lightly peated, it neither fits the heavily peated, 30-40 ppm, Ledaig nor the unpeated Tobermory, and the distillery frequently sends it off for blending purposes. However, it appears that several cask lots of this spirit from the early nineties were mislabeled as Ledaig when Burns Stewart Distillers bought the distillery, and Ian MacMillan took over as master Blender.

It might seem odd that a lightly peated cleaning run could be mixed up with the heavily peated malt the distillery produced, yet at the time, the peat level for Ledaig was pretty low. It was raised in the years after Burns Stewart resurrected the name Tobermory for the distillery and its unpeated spirit, perhaps to draw a clearer distinction between labels.

At any rate, that this cask was from those cleaning runs is a bit of conjecture, but it makes sense based on the profile. While I have not tried any early 90s Ledaig and cannot draw conclusions based on a direct comparison, I trust the bottlers and industry folk who have and believe this to be a product of those cleaning runs.

Overall, I thought the whisky was delightful and infused with intense summer vibes. The subtle profile brought to mind the aroma or the taste of the air when the summer sun beats down on swimming pools, tide pools, concrete, stone, iron, and green gardens. Not only did the whisky taste good and leave me humming, "You are my sunshine," but the story behind it, and its sibling casks, was also fascinating.

Image Credit: Thompson Brothers