Arran 11 Year Old - Douglas Laing Premier Barrel - Single Cask - Robbies Drams Exclusive

Founded on the Isle of Arran in 1993, with the first distillation in 1995, the Lochranza distillery was the first of the new wave of Scottish distilleries and blazed a trail for the explosion in small ‘craft’ distillers this century. Lochranza distillery has four stills and makes both peated and unpeated whisky - the unpeated malt is bottled as Arran, while the peated spirit is released as Machrie Moor.

The early releases of Arran single malt were often small batch or single casks, the vast majority of which were finished in wine casks. The distillery’s first core bottling was Arran 10-year-old, which launched in 2006 and has since been joined by age statements up to 25 years old alongside a plethora of limited editions and single cask releases. Independent Arran is abundant and usually excellent quality.

Founded in the late 1940s by Fred Douglas Laing Sr, the Douglas Laing company spent decades as whisky blenders and exporters before Fred Laing’s sons Stewart and Fred Jr introduced the highly influential Old Malt Cask single malt range in 1998. The McGibbon’s Provenance and Old & Rare Platinum series followed soon afterwards, establishing Douglas Laing as one of Scotland’s finest independent bottlers.

In 2013 Stewart Laing left the business, taking Old Malt Cask and Old & Rare to his new company Hunter Laing, while Fred Laing Jr was joined by his daughter Cara and her husband Chris Leggatt from Morrison Bowmore, who left the business in 2023. The Old Particular and Extra Old Particular ranges were introduced to replace Old Malt Cask and Old & Rare, and the company has since moved into distilling with the purchase of Strathearn distillery in 2019 and the construction of Clutha distillery in Glasgow.