10yr
The Ten
Ex-Bourbon · First Fill · 46% ABV
Sea spray, lemon peel, vanilla pod, soft peat smoke threading through honeycomb. A quiet beginning.
£85View →
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01 — The Whisky
Four bottlings. Nothing more.
Every cask is laid in oak and forgotten. We bottle only what time has fully written.
14yr
The Fourteen
Sherry Hogshead · 48% ABV
Dried fig, walnut bread, dark chocolate, a wisp of bonfire ash. Deeper waters now.
£165View →
House Signature
18yr
The Eighteen
Ex-Bourbon · Sherry Marriage · 50.2% ABV
Toasted oak, candied orange, leather-bound book, salted toffee. The house signature.
£385View →
25yr
Cask Strength
Single Cask · 214 bottles · 58.7% ABV
Antique mahogany, dark cherry, espresso, peat as memory. Bottled at full strength, undiluted.
£1,200View →
02 — The Process
From barley to bottle, by hand.
Four stages. Each one held longer than it needs to be. This is why.
I.
Barley
Our barley is grown on five hectares of windswept land east of the distillery, harvested in late August, malted on a stone floor and dried over peat cut from the Laggan Moss. It is the slowest malting in Scotland. We are not in a hurry.
II.
Mash
Eight tonnes of grist meet the soft, peat-stained water of the Allt Mòr burn in a copper-domed mash tun. Three waters. Twelve hours. A sweet wort the colour of old gold, drawn off into Oregon pine washbacks and given seventy-two hours to ferment — twice the industry standard.
III.
Distill
Two stills, hand-beaten in Rothes. A tall, narrow wash still for clarity. A squat, swan-necked spirit still for weight. We take only the middle cut — the heart — twenty-four litres per minute, no more, no faster. The rest goes back.
IV.
Age
The new make, clear as river water, is filled into oak. Some bourbon, some sherry, some Madeira. The warehouse doors close. The Atlantic salt seeps through the dunnage walls. The angels take their share. We wait. Ten years. Eighteen. Twenty-five. Until the cask is finished saying what it has to say.
03 — The Casks
The wood does most of the talking.
Sixty percent of a single malt's character comes from oak. We choose ours one barrel at a time.
Kentucky · First Fill
Ex-Bourbon
Heaven Hill and Buffalo Trace barrels, shipped wet across the Atlantic. Vanilla, coconut, sun-warmed honeycomb. The bright spine of the house.
Jerez · Oloroso
Sherry Hogshead
Two-hundred-and-fifty-litre Spanish oak, seasoned three years with oloroso. Walnut, fig, leather and bitter cocoa. Weight, and a slow finish.
Funchal · Malmsey
Madeira Finish
Eighteen months in fortified-wine casks from the Atlantic islands. Burnt sugar, marmalade, walnut tart. Reserved for the 18 yr and beyond.
04 — Heritage
Founded 1842. Lost 1953. Refounded 2018.
Iain MacAllister, Master Distiller — sixth generation
Plate IIn the spring of 1842, on a peninsula of black peat and grey stone facing the open Atlantic, the brothers Hamish and Donnan MacAllister sank a single copper still into the earth and called the place Obscura — the hidden one.
For one hundred and eleven years the distillery worked quietly. It supplied blenders in Glasgow, sailors out of Liverpool, and a small, devoted circle who knew where to write. It survived two wars, a famine, and Prohibition. It did not survive the winter of 1953, when a peat fire took the roof of the still house and the family lost everything but the deed.
The site fell silent for sixty-five years. Sheep grazed in the malting floor. The warehouse held seventeen casks no one came to claim.
In 2018, Iain MacAllister — Donnan's great-great-grandson, trained at Springbank, hardened at Brora — came home. He rebuilt the still house stone by stone, reopened the warehouse, and refilled the first new cask in sixty-five years on the third of March, 2019.
The first new release will be ready in 2029.
1842
Founded
1953
Peat Fire
2018
Refounded
05 — Visit
The Bothy.
A two-room visitor house built into the old maltings. Open by appointment, March through October.
90 min£35
The Bothy Tour
A walk through the still house, mash tun and dunnage warehouse. Three tastings.
Book this tour →2 hr£85
The Distiller's Hour
Led by Iain or his deputy. Four tastings drawn straight from the cask.
Book this tour →3 hr£165
The Warehouse Dram
A private session in Warehouse No. 1. Five drams, one of them yours to keep.
Book this tour →Full day£450
The Master's Day
Breakfast at the bothy, malting floor walk, lunch in the still house, and a private bottling.
Book this tour →06 — Press
What the critics have said.
96
“A masterclass in restraint. The 18 yr is one of the most quietly confident single malts to come out of Islay this decade.”
94
“Obscura is doing something almost no one else is willing to: bottling at the right moment, not the convenient one.”
19/20
“The 25 yr Cask Strength is the kind of whisky you sit with in silence for an hour. Extraordinary.”
07 — Reserve
Hold a bottle in your name.
We release each bottling in small allocations. Tell us which one and we will write.