The 2017 Release — commonly listed as Torabhaig Legacy Series The Legacy, or simply "the 2017" — was the distillery's first single malt, bottled in early 2021 from spirit laid down when the stills first ran on 18 January 2017. It is the opening chapter of what Torabhaig have called the Legacy Series: a planned run of limited editions tracking the distillery's progress in its first years of production.
Like everything that has followed, it is a peated Skye malt matured in first-fill and refill bourbon casks and bottled at 46% without chill-filtration or colouring. What makes the inaugural release worth its own entry is context rather than any radical departure in style. This is a very young whisky, released at minimum age, and it was never intended to be anything else. The interest lies in hearing the distillery's first public statement — the raw shape of the Torabhaig voice before the later Allt Gleann and Cnoc Na Moine refinements.
In practice, that means slightly more new-make brightness, a slightly sharper peat profile, and a touch less of the rounded coastal warmth that Allt Gleann would develop. For those following Skye's second distillery since its commissioning, the 2017 Release is both a historical document and a perfectly drinkable peated malt in its own right — an honest opening statement from a distillery that was quite deliberately taking its time.
