Bruichladdich’s Port Charlotte brand hits a milestone with this latest release — at 18 years old it’s the oldest expression of Port Charlotte the distillery has ever released. It’s made with 100% Scottish barley but features a complicated barreling regimen, outlined below. Let’s give it a whirl.
Update: In 2025 the whisky was reissued in a new edition. We missed that one but our coverage of the 2026 release (and future editions) can be found below.
Bruichladdich Port Charlotte 18 Years Old (2024) Review
74% of the stock is aged in refill sherry casks, the other 26% in refill French oak wine casks (with additional detail unspecified).
There’s very heavy peat on the nose, as you can imagine. Beach bonfire, quite ashy, dominates, but the experience is also extremely fruity — primarily showcasing baked apples, then lemon and even some peach. But all that fruit is fully on fire: massively smoldering, with a layer of almonds and milk chocolate underneath. The peat is strong with this one, impossible to avoid throughout the experience.
The palate is sweet and smoky in equal measures, indelibly interconnected. Unctuous and a bit cloying at times, the fruit here comes across as incredibly extracted, almost candylike. Notes of bubblegum, apple butter, peach rings, and almond cookies all hit in rapid succession, to the point where the experience is more than a little cacophonic, even confusing at times. As all of that fades, the finish turns out to be fairly gummy, and though some fun almond notes linger into the sweet conclusion, the heavy peat quality never really coalesces around it to create a cohesive whole.
Old Islay Scotch is often a magical experience, but either Port Charlotte 18 hasn’t yet gotten to that point — or it’s blown right past it. Bummer either way.
108.6 proof. B- / $200 [BUY IT NOW FROM FROOTBAT]
Bruichladdich Port Charlotte 18 Years Old (2026) Review
Per Bruichladdich: Aged in a combination of first fill bourbon (40%), second fill sherry (15%), and ex-virgin oak casks (15%). A portion of the sherry matured spirit was recasked into first fill red wine casks from the Rhone valley for five years, before finishing in second fill bourbon for two years (20%). The final component matured in refill sherry and wine casks (10%).
The ruddy red color connotes an exotic, well-steeped tea, perhaps with florals in the mix, but the nose washes all that away. The smoky aroma of ashy, tarry peat (at 40ppm) is well-integrated into aromatics that include well-roasted almonds, torched grapefruit peel, rosemary, and smudged sage. Dried black tea leaf clings to the experience as it develops in glass.
While I missed the fruity aromas of the 2024 release here, they don’t waste time emerging on the palate, where that candied peach and apricot quality quickly rears its head. Again that gummy quality (the red wine cask influence, methinks) becomes dominant and a little cloying, though I found the sweetness to be significantly tamer with this undertaking. Things get increasingly tropical as it develops, with a smoked pineapple note reminding me of last night’s tiki bar visit. Coconut and almond elements soon combine to give the whisky a Mounds-like flair, though there’s enough ashiness to keep that in check as the drying, slightly green finish arrives.
It’s considerably more cohesive than the 2024 release, but still quite a challenging ride, particularly for an Islay release of this age.
104.6 proof. 8000 bottles produced. B+ / $199 [BUY IT NOW FROM FROOTBAT]
The post Review: Bruichladdich Port Charlotte 18 Years Old (Updated 2026) appeared first on Drinkhacker: The Insider’s Guide to Good Drinking.
