Scarabus Cigar Malt Islay Single Malt - Hunter Laing

Volume: 0.7 litres | Alcohol content: 46% | Chill filtration: No | Colouring: No

Special Features:

Scarabus Cigar Malt brings three cask types together with Islay's peaty character. This limited edition matured entirely in Oloroso sherry, Pedro Ximénez sherry and Ruby Port casks. The cask selection shapes its fruitiness and spice, combining them with robust peat smoke. These casks were used for the full maturation, not merely for a subsequent finish.

The Cigar Malt was designed to accompany a cigar. Its character combines dark fruit, earthy peat and subtle roasted notes with a rounded sweetness. Hunter Laing bottles it at 46% in bottles containing 0.7 litres. The whisky is neither chill-filtered nor coloured.

Tasting Notes:

• Nose: The nose reveals candied orange peel, cooked red berries and almonds, underpinned by an earthy peat note.
• Palate: On the palate, dry peat smoke combines with dark sugar syrup and dark fruit. A gentle sweetness with roasted notes complements these impressions.
• Finish: The long finish is warming, with a rounded sweetness that lingers.

Distillery/Bottler:

Hunter Laing is an independent whisky bottler based in Glasgow. The family's history in the whisky business spans Frederick Laing's blending company, the work of his son Stewart and the next generation, Andrew and Scott. Its ranges include the single-cask series Old Malt Cask and Old & Rare. Scarabus comes from an unnamed distillery on Islay.

Hunter Laing sources casks for its whisky stocks from cooperages in Scotland and the USA, as well as from Spanish bodegas. Through agreements with Scottish distilleries, the company has its own casks filled with new-make spirit. Maturation takes place at the respective distilleries or in its own warehouses in Glasgow. The master blender regularly samples the stocks and monitors their development. This approach links cask sourcing with long-term oversight of maturation.

Scarabus is the name of a place on Islay and means “rocky place” in Old Norse. The enigmatic symbols on the label draw on the work of Islay-born John Francis Campbell. He collected Celtic folk tales and developed a sunshine recorder that measures daily hours of sunshine.

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