Bladnoch Alinta

Bladnoch is not a distillery you associate with smoke. Scotland's southernmost, Galloway-rooted, known for its lightness and florality — peat has never been part of the story. Until Alinta. Named for the indigenous Australian word meaning fire and flames — a nod to owner David Prior's Australian heritage — it is the first peated expression in Bladnoch's history, and it is anything but tentative.

The spirit is distilled from heavily peated malt at 60ppm, then married across first-fill ex-bourbon barrels and first-fill Pedro Ximénez casks. The PX is the masterstroke — rather than letting the smoke stand alone, it wraps it in dark sweetness: raisin, chocolate, toffee, honeycomb. On the nose you get campfire embers, tobacco, and leather alongside white chocolate and vanilla. The palate follows through — smoke heavier than the nose suggests, but balanced by the syrupy richness of the PX, with caramel, dark wood, and a late medicinal edge. The finish is long, warm, and unhurried.

It is not the most classically structured peated whisky. It is its own thing — a Lowland distillery doing something unexpected with real conviction, and pulling it off. Bottled at 47% ABV, non-chill filtered, natural colour.