Kilchoman Sanaig is the whisky with which Islay’s farm distillery turns to sherry: 46%, malt peated to 50 ppm, and a recipe that reverses Machir Bay’s, with 70% oloroso and 30% bourbon. It sells for around £57 to £64 at UK retailers. In the Kilchoman core range it is the bottle of dark fruit and spice.
The bottle
The distillery publishes the proportions: around 70% comes from oloroso sherry hogsheads, the remaining 30% from bourbon barrels. Kilchoman adds a detail few others share: part of the sherry is a finish in oloroso hogsheads, part is whisky fully matured in them. All the sherry casks come from the José y Miguel Martín bodega, the same one behind Loch Gorm.
There is no age statement, but the label does state that it is non chill filtered with natural colour. The malt is the one peated to 50 ppm that Kilchoman buys from Port Ellen Maltings, the same as in Machir Bay: the barley grown at Rockside Farm, at 20 ppm, goes into other bottles. So Sanaig carries the same peat as its sibling and changes everything in the wood.
It went out worldwide in 2016, after a first limited launch in France, and has been the second bottle of the core range ever since. The name comes from a rocky inlet north of the distillery: Islay’s west coast up to Sanaigmore takes the worst of the Atlantic storms, and from the cliffs you can see Loch Gruinart and the Paps of Jura.
Like Machir Bay, Sanaig got a new label in February 2025. Kilchoman is the Wills family’s independent distillery in the north-west of the island and filled its first cask on 14 December 2005: it grows and malts part of its own barley and bottles everything on site.
Tasting notes
Nose: raisin and plum from the oloroso, then orange peel and a peat that comes across earthier than in Machir Bay. Underneath there is heather and sweet spice, cinnamon above all.
Palate: full, with dark fruit and dark chocolate, and smoke that spreads through the middle like embers. The 46% holds sherry and peat together without one covering the other, and the texture is fatter than Machir Bay’s.
Finish: long, with brown sugar, clove and a return of smoke that lingers. It closes sweet, where Machir Bay closes salty.
The official notes describe heather, raisins, pear and orange peel on the nose, over-ripe plums, red cherries and barbecue peat smoke with toffee and dark chocolate on the palate, and a finish of mixed fruit, caramel, cinnamon and clove.
Within the Kilchoman range
The core range holds four bottles. Machir Bay does the opposite of Sanaig, with 90% bourbon and 10% oloroso, and goes for citrus. The Batch Strength comes out at 57%, and the Rockside 11 Year Old, added in 2026, is the first with an age statement and the only one made from the farm’s barley, at 20 ppm.
Sanaig also exists at natural strength, released in limited numbers at 57.8%: the same whisky without the water, which we set against this one in Sanaig versus Sanaig Cask Strength. And for Kilchoman’s sherry even further forward there is Loch Gorm, the annual edition matured in oloroso butts only.
Who it’s for
It makes sense for anyone who wants peat together with the dark fruit of sherry, without reaching the prices of older sherried peated whiskies. It makes sense too for anyone who already knows Machir Bay and wants to hear how much the same spirit changes when the wood is different.
It is not for anyone after dry, salty peat, which the oloroso softens here. Nor is it for anyone who wants to know the age of what they drink: Sanaig carries no age statement, and the distillery does not publish the ages of its parts.
Sanaig shows that Kilchoman can use sherry without turning it into a shortcut: the peat stays recognisable, and the wood adds rather than covers. Next to Machir Bay it is the most direct way to see how much the cask weighs on the same spirit. The rest of the story is in our Kilchoman guide.
