The Feis Ile, Islay's annual festival of malt and music held at the end of May, has become the occasion on which every Islay distillery releases its most idiosyncratic bottlings of the year. These are limited editions, usually single cask or small batch, and they are the means by which the distilleries reveal experiments that would otherwise stay inside the warehouses. Bunnahabhain's Feis Ile releases have leaned heavily on sherry casks and on the interplay between its unpeated and peated production.
Aonadh, meaning union or joining in Scots Gaelic, is built around exactly that interplay. It brings together Bunnahabhain's two distinct spirits — the nutty, coastal unpeated malt that forms the distillery's core identity, and the Moine peated make that sits alongside it — and marries them at cask strength. Bottled without chill filtration or colouring, the whisky presents the distillery's full range within a single glass.
The nose opens with toasted almond and heather honey, the unpeated character leading, before cool wood smoke drifts across and settles. Raisin and sea salt sit beneath the sweetness. The palate carries nutty malt, dried fruit and brown sugar laced with the peat's quiet presence, green olive brine and a coastal mineral edge keeping the sweetness honest. The finish is long and warm, gently smoky, closing on honeyed oak and a final breath of brine.
It is a thoughtful bottling rather than a dramatic one. The union is gentle: neither side is asked to dominate, and the peat is allowed to move through the sweeter spirit rather than seize it. For a distillery whose two faces have sometimes been treated as separate identities, Aonadh is a quietly satisfying reconciliation.
