Bunnahabhain was founded in 1881 by William Robertson of Robertson and Baxter and the Greenlees brothers of Islay Distillers Company, and built in its remote spot on the Sound of Islay precisely because it required deep-water access for the puffers that would carry malt in and whisky out. Unlike most of its island neighbours, Bunnahabhain's standard production is unpeated — a distinction that has long set it apart and that makes the distillery's sherry-matured bottlings among the most accommodating in Islay.
Pedro Ximenez is the darkest of the sherries, pressed from raisined grapes sun-dried on esparto mats in the Montilla-Moriles hinterland of Jerez. The wine is thick, black and almost preternaturally sweet, and the casks that have held it impart a concentrated fruit character that few other woods can match. Applied to a fourteen-year-old Bunnahabhain — bottled unchill-filtered and without colouring at 46.3% — the result is a whisky in which the distillery's nutty, coastal malt meets an unrelenting depth of dried fruit.
The nose is immediately raisined, with prune, dark muscovado and walnut shell, but Bunnahabhain's maritime signature steadies the sweetness with a thread of sea salt. The palate is thick with dried fig and molasses, cut by bitter orange and salted almond, and the PX's syrupy weight is kept honest by the spirit's quiet brine. The finish is long and dark, drying slowly into coffee grounds and a final coastal breath.
It is a study in contrast: the sweetest of sherries tempered by the saltiest of unpeated malts. Bunnahabhain's northern isolation has always suited cask-led whisky, and the PX cask flatters the house style without overwriting it.
