The Arranach is a cask thingy happening at Arran distillery on the island of the same name. Back when I was there in early 2022 I don’t think these wee bottles were available. There were several distillery only bottlings, but not the 20cl ones.

Of course, since Brexit had started kicking in for a couple of months, so bringing the bottles home with me was not an options. Unfortunately, since there was a rather stunning bourbon cask available that we had during the tasting.

This one, then. It’s a PX cask, without any official information on its age. There is a ‘2013’ scribbled on the label on Whiskybase, so this is about 9 years old.

Sniff:
Very modern with an oak forward arrival on the nose. Apple wood, apples in general, porridge too. It focuses more on barley after a little while.

Sip:
The palate is quite gentle, for a 56% dram that is. Barley and porridge, with a bit of honey and caster sugar. Baked apples, a whiff of cinnamon. Very Arran-y.

Swallow:
The finish is, again, very modern with some cask engineering flavors. The sherry shows itself as a very wine-y flavor here.

This is a typical Arran, both for the distillery style, the age and the flavors that have popped up during maturation. That is fortunate if it is in your wheelhouse. If it’s not, you might want to skip any and all Arran sherry casks. As for me, I think they’re quite tasty, but they’re not overly special since they’re so ubiquitous.

So, yes, a tasty dram. There’s no doubt about that. But I probably would have gone for a bourbon cask if I had the choice.

86/100