Abhainn Dearg - Single Cask

Abhainn Dearg is a tiny distillery in Uig on the island of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, and is the first legal distillery on the island since the mid-19th century. Established in 2008 by owner Mark Tayburn, Abhainn Dearg is a very small, traditional distillery making both peated and unpeated spirit on its homemade stills. Abhainn Dearg distillery has a tiny capacity of around 20,000 litres per annum - enough to fill around 80 standard hogshead casks a year, although current production is around half of that.

The first official bottlings from Abhainn Dearg were released in 2010 as The Spirit of Lewis and were malt spirits that were not quite yet whisky. The first single malt whisky followed in 2011, and in 2018 Abhainn Dearg released their first 10-year-old single malt whisky, which is now a regular bottling. At the time of writing in 2022 no independent bottlings of Abhainn Dearg whisky had been released.

Distillery bottlings are, as the name suggests, bottled by or for the distillery from which the whisky has originated and are thus often referred to as Official Bottlings or OBs. Distillery bottlings are generally more desirable for collectors and usually fetch higher prices at auction than independent bottlings. They are officially-endorsed versions of the whisky from a particular distillery and are therefore considered the truest expression of the distillery’s character.

This ideal of the distillery character is regarded so seriously by the distilleries and brand owners that casks of whisky that are considered to vary too far from the archetype are frequently sold on to whisky brokers and independent bottlers. When this happens, it is often with the proviso that the distillery’s name is not allowed to be used when the cask is bottled for fear of diminishing or damaging the distillery’s character and status.