Tasting notes

nose

heather and orange peel over raisin, pear and stone fruit, with mixed spice and rich peat smoke

palate

overripe plum and red cherry with a touch of citrus, giving way to barbecue smoke, toffee, oak and dark chocolate

finish

mouth-coating and lasting; mixed fruit, caramel, cinnamon and clove hold on, with brown sugar and peat smoke trailing into a long sweetness

Mash bill

100% malted barley, peated to 50 parts per million. Kilchoman grows barley on its own farm at Rockside, which it bought in 2015 so it could grow more of it, and since 2018 has malted more of that crop on a malt floor and kiln of its own. The heavy peating carries through the sherry casks, so smoke stays in the whisky alongside the dried fruit.

Why it's craft

Sanaig is the sherry-forward whisky in Kilchoman's core range, launched worldwide in 2016 and matured mostly in Oloroso sherry casks with bourbon barrels making up the rest. Kilchoman is the farm distillery on Islay that Anthony and Kathy Wills built at Rockside Farm, filling their first cask in 2005. It grows and floor-malts some of its own barley, distils in copper pot stills, and the label states the whisky is distilled, matured and bottled at the distillery, without chill filtration or added colour.