Review #115: Ledaig 18 Year Batch 2 Sherry

I have a fondness for Ledaig and Oban that mostly stemmed from first learning how to pronounce their names (“Lech-aig” and “O-bin” respectively). But I love Ledaig because after a very long day drinking at San Francisco Whiskies of the World, one of the few things I remembered was that I really liked the Ledaigs that I had been tasting.

Ledaig is from the Tobermory distillery – the only distillery on the Isle of Mull, which is north of Jura. Although Tobermory’s unpeated namesake is often panned by the scotch community, Ledaig serves as one of its bright spots. The highly underrated Ledaig line is Tobermory’s peated line and they are typically found as sherry finished bottlings. Based on this, you may be expecting a Lagavulin-experience, but the peat is more rubber than Lagavulin’s oolong tea type peat.

The particular one we bought is the batch 2 Spanish sherry, which I believe is their 2016 release.

Quick overview of our scoring system. Note that we try to give a “5” for an average whisky, which is lower than standard whisky scoring guides (typically around 80).

Additional Information

• Age: 18 years old
• Batch 2 (they are now on batch 3)
• ABV: 46.3%
• Non-chill filtered

About

• Ledaig was originally the name of the Tobermory distillery
• Toberymory (and Ledaig) are produced on the Isle of Mull and then shipped to Deanston distillery (mainland) for filling into casks. They are finally aged on Islay in Bunnahabhain distillery.
• Ledaig uses both peat-dried malted barley and the peat-infused water of Tobermory (which is why the unpeated line also has a slight phenolic character)