Aberlour A’Bunadh Cask Strength Scotch Whisky

The Aberlour distillery is located in Aberlourtown in Speyside at the crossings of the rivers Lour and Spey near the rugged peaks of Ben Rinnes. Contrary to the date of 1879 on the Aberlour label, the distillery was founded by James Gordon and Peter Weir in 1826. The original distillery, which was destroyed in a fire, was rebuilt in 1879 by James Fleming, and this is the date marked on the bottles. More recently the distillery was acquired by Pernod Ricard when they took over Campbell Distillers in 1975. “Aberlour” is a gaelic word meaning ‘mouth of the chattering burn’ (stream).

The water source for Aberlour flows from Ben Rinnes, through the local peat and granite of the Lour valley and onto the distillery. The water is naturally soft and is used in all stages of production, and helps to lend Aberlour its smooth, delicate character.

Aberlour A’Bunadh (A’Bunadh is the Gaelic for ‘origin’) is a limited run, small batch, cask-strength single malt whisky. It has no age statement mainly because the whiskies used to blend it have too wide a range of ages to come up with an official age statement.  Each batch is blended from whiskies ranging from 5 to 25 years old.

Aberlour A’Bunadh owes it huge levels of complexity and flavour, thanks to its maturation in the very best first fill Oloroso sherry casks. It is one of the most heavily sherried single malts and owes it softness and sweet flavours to this process. The whisky itself is non-chill-filtered, and bottled at natural cask strength. Probably one of the best value cask strength whiskies available.

Aberlour A’Bunadh Batch 44

Each batch varies slight in tasting profile and alcoholic strength, the following are representative tasting notes.

Aberlour A’Bunadh Tasting Notes

Aberlour A’Bunadh is a deep, rich amber colour. The nose aromas of mixed spices,  tobacco, cocoa, spiced orange, vanilla, and other notes associated with Oloroso sherry. The palate is rich with more orange notes, dried fruits, ginger and chocolate,  toffee / caramel sherry and oak – it is full –bodied and creamy. The finish is full, strong and intense, long and lingering with a good dollop of sweetness, sherry flavours and more mixed spice.

Currently we have batch no 44 bottled at 59.7% (25/09/13). Check our whisky list to see what bottling of Aberlour A’Bunadh we currently have.