After Lunch at The Port Charlotte Hotel , which was superb as usual , we headed down to Bunnahabhain for what has turned out to be the highlight of the festival (so far....) , a tour of No.4 warehouse with John the manager . Those of you who know John will have some idea of the humourous content of his tour , needless to say it got around to his specialised subject Jim McEwan (or his Grandad as he refers to him.....) , all good hearted stuff !!!!

The tour wasn't what we expected , basically he showed us the difference in maturation between various casks and we got to try some stunning Bunnahabhains . I've always had a high regard for old Bunnies (the 65/66 festivals bottlings and the Auld Acquaintance) and found the younger ones to be very hit and miss but he showed us four exceptional casks . First off was the best of the four a 1976 refill sherry butt , if he'd offered me the chance of this one i would have bought it , absolutely stunning ! Next up was a 1977 RS to show us what difference there can be between similar casks with one year less maturation , again superb but not quite upto the first one . For the Third one we moved up stairs to try a 1969 Bourbon hogshead , absolutely fantastic , somebody thought it was a bit soapy but i found nothing at all wrong with it . Lastly was a bit of surprise to some of the group , the old 1997 peated Bunny (Moine as it was bottled a few festivals ago ) , this was is coming along really well , still spirity but boy it goes down really well!!!! A really good hour and a half was had by all , but can i please ask everyone if they go on a special event like this , please don't spoil it by starting to talk to your friend in your native tongue as we want to hear the man who has taken time out to do this ! You know who you are .....after all we're not going to talk through your world cup.........

After the tour we headed back to the distillery shop and picked up our Bunnahabhain festival bottling , a 14yo Pedro Ximenez finish , which i might just have to crack tonight to see if it's worth picking up another one as the tasting notes on the back have got my mouth salivating ......

We hope they will get around to bottling some of the ones we tried , according to John there's plenty of old stock , the clock is ticking on the 1969 we tried as it's heading down to the lower 40's percent wise . There's a 1971 due out later in the year for their 125th anniversary bottling but it's going to be limited to 700 and odd bottles worldwide .

Malt of the day - 1976/ 1969/1997 Bunnahabhains !