Port Charlotte 2002-2007 - Royal Mile Whiskies - Single Cask 299

Founded in 1881, Bruichladdich was taken over in 1968 by Invergordon Distillers, who expanded the distillery to four stills in 1975, but allowed the otherwise unmodernised Bruichladdich to decline in the 1980s. In 1995, with Invergordon now under Whyte & Mackay’s shaky stewardship, Bruichladdich was mothballed. Thankfully the distillery was revitalised under a consortium led by Murray McDavid’s Mark Reynier, who bought Bruichladdich in 2000. 

With the effervescent Jim McEwan on board as distillery manager, Bruichladdich’s fortunes swiftly improved. Bruichladdich's whisky had traditionally been unpeated, but McEwan soon began experimenting with higher peat levels and embraced the wine finishing trend with gusto. In 2012, the revived Bruichladdich was sold to Rémy Cointreau.

Invergordon bottled unpeated Bruichladdich at various ages and strengths from the 1970s onwards, with the earlier bottlings far outshining the later ones. The Murray McDavid regime issued a blizzard of mostly wine-finished casks and introduced the heavily peated Port Charlotte and Octomore malts, which have found an avid fanbase. Independent Bruichladdich is widely available and generally high quality.