It’s been years in the making but it looks like Diageo might finally be ready to reveal the reborn Port Ellen distillery. Is your collection ready to receive it?

Many people believe that Diageo has kept us all waiting long enough. Will we see Port Ellen Distillery cranked into action in 2024? We were sure we would hear its engines roar last year, and many writers proclaimed it so, but now we must muse again. But reawakening is a slow business, and Diageo has refused to rush the unveiling of this star of Islay’s next chapter. 

Given the haste to rid the island of the distillery in the first place back in the early 1980s, it’s at least reassuring to see the rebuild take its time. Many of the original buildings and stills were destroyed or removed then, so bringing it back is a serious endeavour. 

All signs are for a March unveiling. Confidence is high, given that Diageo released two 44-year-old bottles of this storied whisky in February.  Both were named Gemini – Port Ellen Gemini and Gemini Remnant – and were laid down in 1978. This makes them the oldest bottles released from the distillery’s original stock.  

It will likely be 12 years before we get to taste a mature release from the reborn distillery, so those in the know are eagerly seeking out older stock for their collections ahead of time.

Here are three excellent historical releases that are currently on our shelves:

Port Ellen Rogue Casks

Great enthusiasm followed the release of these casks in 2020. At that time, it was the oldest release from Port Ellen and represented an intriguing and deliciously different bottling. Casked 40 years earlier, in 1979, the whisky was matured in nine so-called rogue casks – four American hogsheads and five European sherry casks. 

These casks were selected from the range available then, reportedly due to their specific flavour characteristics and because they weren’t typical of the Port Ellen distillery profile. Hence, the rogue title for these left-of-centre bottles. There were 1,380 bottles released, each with an ABV of 50.9% — a wonderful pour to top out a Port Ellen collection.

Port Ellen Manager Reserve 20

This bottle was distilled in the last year of Port Ellen’s production before its closure in the early 1980s. The plug was pulled a year later, making this one of the rarer bottles from the Islay house. 

It was released by independent bottler Silver Seal, based out of Glasgow, and is one of only 360 bottles in its Missing series. At 20 years old, it’s a hugely collectable vintage, released in 2003. If Port Ellen does reopen this year, it will probably be another ten years before the new distillery will be bottling anything of any great substance. In that time, the remaining original stock will continue to grow in value – this bottle included. Even after that point, simply being from the original stock will ensure the Manager’s Reserve increases its value long into the future.

Port Ellen Eidolon 36 

The independent bottler Hunter Laing released this 36-year-old edition in 2019 and tried to capture a sense of its historical significance by naming it with the Greek word Eidolon, meaning recollection or retrieval.

The whisky was laid down in 1983, the same year the distillery closed and is a 53.5% cask strength single malt. Cask strength is a common feature of Hunter Laing’s limited edition cask releases. This is the first of a three-part edition to mark the closure of Port Ellen. There were just 638 bottles released, making this an almost immediate collector’s item, and it has only gained prominence since.