Port Charlotte takes its name from the village two miles down the Rinns from Bruichladdich, where the original Lochindaal distillery operated from 1829 until 1929. The village itself was founded in the early nineteenth century by Walter Frederick Campbell, the laird of Islay, and named for his mother Lady Charlotte; the distillery that bore its name was one of the casualties of the Pattison crash and the long interwar contraction of the Scotch industry.
When Bruichladdich was rebuilt at the start of the 2000s, the new owners revived the Port Charlotte name as a heavily peated counterpart to the unpeated house style, distilled at the same Loch Indaal site rather than at the village itself. The peating level is specified at 40 parts per million phenols in the malted barley, which places it firmly in the heavily peated camp, though below the extreme of the sister Octomore line.
The 10 Year Old is the permanent flagship of the range, replacing earlier vintages and travel-retail editions and intended as the definitive statement of what Port Charlotte is. Maturation is in a combination of first-fill and second-fill American oak ex-bourbon casks, with a portion of French wine casks contributing additional weight. As with everything from the rebuilt Bruichladdich, it is bottled at 50% ABV, without chill-filtration and without colouring.
It sits between the medicinal smoke of Laphroaig and the sweeter, more fruit-driven peat of Lagavulin, with a brisker, saltier character that reflects its position on the western side of the island. As a permanent ten-year-old heavily peated Islay at this strength and price, it is one of the more honest propositions on the shelf.
