The Chairman’s Selection is the last Ardnahoe bottling composed in person by Stewart Laing, the distillery’s founder and chairman, who died on 8 April 2026 at the age of 79. He put it together to his own direct specifications: six years of maturation, a combination of sherry and ex-bourbon casks, 60.2% ABV cask strength. Each gift box carries a letter in his own hand, making this his final signed word to the distillery he founded on Islay.
Release details
The Chairman’s Selection sits alongside the Manager’s Selection released in summer 2025, but takes a different approach. That release was a single first-fill bourbon cask chosen by distillery manager David Livingstone, bottled at 58.4% ABV across 232 individually numbered bottles. The Chairman’s Selection is a multi-cask composition: the label reads “carefully composed to the specifications of our Founder and Chairman”, setting it apart from a single cask. It went on sale exclusively through the distillery shop at £95, capped at two bottles per order, and sold out quickly.
Maturation and casks
Ardnahoe’s core range has worked primarily with ex-bourbon casks. The addition of sherry casks in this limited release brings elements bourbon alone does not: dark fruit, spice, more density on the palate. The label specifies “heavily-peated” and confirms no artificial colouring and no chill-filtration. At 60.2%, the Chairman’s Selection sits just above the Manager’s Selection’s 58.4%.
The distillery’s official notes point to peat smoke, coastal salt and cocoa on the nose, honeyed malt and stewed plums on the palate, and a long finish of black pepper and salted toffee. Like the Manager’s Selection before it, which sold out fast at £75, the Chairman’s Selection has sold out on the distillery’s shop too: a young distillery whose followers already move quickly on its limited releases.
