Torfa is the Old Norse word for peat, and the name is a nod to the Vikings who once worked this stretch of the Moray coast. Glenglassaugh has produced peated spirit only intermittently in its history — the distillery's traditional output is unpeated coastal Highland malt — but since the 2008 revival, master blender Rachel Barrie has bottled a peated batch each year and matured it primarily in first-fill ex-bourbon casks.
The phenol level sits around 20 ppm, which by the standards of Islay is moderate but for a Highland coastal distillery is assertive. What is striking is how the peat behaves: rather than the medicinal, iodine-driven smoke of the southern Hebrides, Torfa offers a sweet, honeyed wood smoke — closer in spirit to a campfire on the beach than a hospital bandage. The active American oak supplies vanilla and coconut, and the spirit's natural waxy fruitiness pushes through the smoke rather than being buried by it.
Bottled at 50% ABV, non-chill-filtered and natural in colour, it is presented in the same uncompromising way as its sibling Evolution. The two make an instructive pair — one peated, one not, both drawn from the same coastal stock.
For drinkers who find Islay too austere and Speyside too polite, Torfa occupies useful middle ground. It is smoke with manners.
