Arran Illicit Stills - Smugglers Series Edition 1 - 2015 Release

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.

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.