Sleat Stories

At Torabhaig, Smoke with Taste isn’t just how we make our whisky - it’s a way of thinking. Smoke should lift the flavour, not cloud it. Balanced, complex, and shaped by the Skye, it’s our signature house style. So when we met Will from Wilder Kitchen - a chef who roams Scotland’s wild edges cooking over open fire - we knew the pairing was too good to pass up. We invited him to the ruins of Caisteal Chamuis, just behind the distillery, to cook a dish that would pair perfectly with our latest Legacy Series release, Sound of Sleat. With the...

  Reimagining the Sound of Sleat For the fourth chapter in our Legacy Series, we turned to a different kind of storytelling. We revisited a tune long woven into Scotland’s musical tradition - The Sound of Sleat, a four-part reel written by Donald MacKinnon in the 1950s. A piece inspired by the same stretch of sea that runs behind our distillery - the same inspiration for our latest release. To bring it to life, we asked Highland-born musicians Mairearad Green and Mike Vass to take the tune and shape something new - something that captures the spirit of the Sound of Sleat,...

The Spring of our ninth year, here at Torabhaig Distillery, brings with it a further edition of our exploratory Legacy Series, ‘Sound of Sleat’. In these releases we have been examining the flavours drawn from various barrels laid down in our warehouses, from year one. As these initial years have passed, we have grown to appreciate the effect that the American Oak, Quercus Alba, has on our spirit as it matures. Here in our new release, we have used it at three ages with differing seasoning… …First-fill freshly charred barrels shipped directly from the cooperage, first-fill Bourbon barrels typically 4-6...

Here at Torabhaig we are celebrating the end of our eighth year of distilling and barrelling our own single malt whiskies. When we started, the ageing process sat firmly in our minds as an ideal… …the flavours we hoped the spirit would develop were clear but still in our imagination… …as each year has passed, our tastings have provided us with a better feel for how the various barrel sets are developing. The signature spirit from our Torabhaig stills and the cut point we use for our core spirit runs define our starting point. The use of various first-fill barrels...