This, the second Octomore release, came out at a whacking 140ppm, but the distillery’s slow trickle-distillation and elegant stills brought a whole new dimension to peated whisky – all the heady, peat smoke aromas with an elegance and creamy texture that belie its age. On the basis of the previous year’s lesson, Bruichladdich had no choice but to dial up the already titanic peating of their original malted barley to create another whisky benchmark. It started out as a late night ''what if '' idea after a few drams. What if we distilled the most heavily peated barley humanly possible, in the tall, narrow-necked Bruichladdich stills? The legendary Octomore, named for James Brown's farm above Port Charlotte, this is a dram that has taken the world by storm. The spirit of Octomore has been defying logic for over fifteen years. The “what if” moment that once seemed almost absurd has progressively morphed into something endlessly alluring.