Laphroaig has unveiled Willem by Willem, a 14 year old limited edition created with actor Willem Dafoe. Friends of Laphroaig members can pre-order until April 28, with general retail launching May 1, 2026 at £139. It’s the first bottle to come out of the partnership announced in September 2025.
Release details
Willem by Willem is bottled at 53.7% ABV, matured in American oak ex-bourbon casks and finished in hand-selected Oloroso sherry casks. Laphroaig’s product page keeps tasting notes minimal (peat, sea salt, long finish), and that’s deliberate: the campaign rolling out alongside the launch asks drinkers to come up with their own notes instead of taking the distillery’s. Launch markets: UK, US, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Japan, Australia and Global Travel Retail.
A blind selection
Dafoe picked the whisky alongside Sarah Dowling, the distillery’s Senior Whisky Maker, sampling several casks with no tasting notes, no guidance and no expectations. The bottling is the one that, in his words, made his tastebuds and curiosity come alive the most. That’s also the hook of the “Unphorgettable, No Notes” campaign: fans submit their own take on the whisky in any creative form (poetry, sketch, song, short film), and the winner appears alongside Dafoe in his next short for Laphroaig.
The actor-as-ambassador playbook
Tying a celebrity face to a peated single malt isn’t new. Lagavulin has worked with Nick Offerman, the Parks and Recreation actor, since 2019: first Ron Swanson drinking Lagavulin on screen, then the “My Tales of Whisky” YouTube show, then five annual releases under his name (Charred Oak, Guinness Cask Finish, Caribbean Rum Cask). An organic build-up, several years in the making.
Laphroaig has gone the other way around. Dafoe appeared in September 2025 in a polished short film, and by May 2026 there’s already a bottle bearing his name. Months, not years, and the budget shows in the package: short film, eight-market campaign, global contest, a dedicated cocktail bar in Mayfair renamed “The Barley Dafoe” for the occasion. Whether the numbers will pay back what Suntory put on the table is another matter. The signal is unmistakable though: the celebrity face is becoming an asset Scotch majors don’t want to leave uncovered, and similar moves from other distilleries are likely in the months ahead.
Friends of Laphroaig members have until April 28 to enter the pre-release ballot. From May 1 the bottle ships through specialist retailers worldwide. At £139 ($156) Willem by Willem comes in above the annual Cairdeas releases and below Laphroaig’s archive bottlings.
