Scots Gaelic for ‘skilled and ingenious’, Ealanta is a 19 Years Old Glenmorangie, fully matured in virgin American white oak casks with a provenance that stretches all the way to the mountains of Missouri and the Mark Twain National Forest.

Glenmorangie, based in the Highlands of Scotland, is world renowned for its research into the effect of wood on whisky maturation.

The company’s Distilling and Whisky Creation Director, Dr. Bill Lumsden, is an acknowledged and much awarded pioneer in this field. He is also well known for travelling the world to search out the best oak casks in which to mature his whisky.

Dr Lumsden commented:”It’s no secret in our industry that it’s the ‘wood that makes the whisky’ and for many years my team and I have been carrying out detailed research in this area. Ealanta is in fact one experiment dating way back to just before I joined the company in the early 1990s.

“Having discovered these casks and sampled them, I realised then what a jewel we had and immediately had the casks secreted in a safe place.

“Over the years I have kept a close eye on their progress, and although the final recipe for Glenmorangie Ealanta is from me and my team, it’s a real pleasure to see the original experiment see the light of day at last…and be still here to celebrate it!”

He went on: “The casks selected way back then from oaks of the Mark Twain National Forest were absolutely top quality and unusually had not previously held any liquor such as bourbon, so it’s the interaction of our delicate floral spirit from our very tall stills directly with this ‘virgin’ wood that makes for many intriguing flavours.

“New wood also imparts a purity of flavour that I think many Glenmorangie aficionados will find an interesting divergence from our previous Private Edition releases.

“Using virgin oak casks that have been heavily toasted adds huge mouth-filling, buttery, creamy, vanilla flavours – somewhat like a crème brulée topped with almond and marzipan. This makes for a lovely rounded and complex expression of Glenmorangie”.

He ended: “A light hearted conclusion to all this serious research in to wood types and Ealanta was that Mark Twain himself reputedly discovered and wrote about his liking for good scotch whisky on his trip to London in 1873 so it’s nice to think he might even have enjoyed a dram of Glenmorangie in the luxurious surroundings of the Langham Hotel where he is known to have stayed.”

Bottled at a strength of 46%, and non chill-filtered for extra texture and mouth feel.

Glenmorangie Ealanta is the 2013 addition to the ongoing Private Edition range, comprising so far the highly sought after Sonnalta PX , Finealta and Artein.

The Private Edition range consists of rare and interesting limited edition whiskies carefully selected from the ‘cabinet of curiosities’ of Dr Bill Lumsden, Director of Distilling and Whisky Creation at The Glenmorangie Company, that are fast becoming collectors’ items.