L'Anima — Italian for the soul — is a Dalmore release created in collaboration with Massimo Bottura, the chef behind Osteria Francescana in Modena and the founder of Food for Soul, the non-profit organisation through which Bottura has campaigned against food waste. The bottling was conceived as a charity release, with proceeds directed towards Food for Soul's work, and was assembled by Richard Paterson from some of the oldest stocks then held in the Dalmore warehouses.
At 49 years old it draws on whisky distilled in the early 1970s, around the time Paterson himself first walked into Dalmore. The maturation followed the distillery's familiar architecture: long ageing in American white oak ex-bourbon casks, with finishing in a combination of sherry casks from Gonzalez Byass and other prestige wood. Half a century on the Cromarty Firth has compressed the spirit into something dense and resinous, but Paterson's hand has kept the cask influence in dialogue with the malt rather than smothering it.
The nose is layered and slow: dark treacle, antique leather, espresso, dried orange, polished oak and sweet pipe tobacco. The palate carries bitter chocolate, candied citrus peel, fig jam, walnut and dark coffee, threaded with aged sherry. There is no wood fatigue here, only a kind of accumulated gravity.
The finish is exceptionally long, dry and resinous, leaving cocoa, leather and a slow exhalation of citrus oil. L'Anima is whisky as testament — to fifty years of one man's craft, to a chef's conscience, and to the patient warehouses on a quiet Highland firth.
