One question that often pops it’s head over the horizon is “What is the best peaty whisky?”, and if you know anything at all about Single Malt Scotch Whisky one part of the world will always come to mind.

Whiskies from Islay (an island in Scotland) are considered to be amongst the most peaty whisky in the world due to the island geological structure. Islay is very largely composed of peat. The water on Islay is brown, even the water in the burns is brown, and winter gales drive salt spray far inland, and this saturates the peat, which is dried again by the briny, seaweedy breeze. All these characteristics go into the whiskies of Islay to differing extents.

Of all the eight distilleries based on Islay you should expect to encounter that famous peaty flavour from them all, however as we’ve previously mentioned you’ll soon see that these vary considerably. This obviously depends on where on the island the distillery is based and the process used to create each particular bottling. One of the shining examples that goes against the grain is the Laphroaig 1989 20 Year Old which is finished in sherry casks with the resulting flavour being slightly sweet for a whisky. Although sweeter due to the sherry influence this whisky still has undertones of peat which demonstrates how much of influence Islay plays on the resulting whisky.  Click here to see all the most popular Islay Whiskies >>