Distilled at the Willowbank distillery in Dunedin from 100% malted New Zealand barley, then left to rest for twenty-five years in American oak ex-bourbon casks. A quarter-century in wood is a rare luxury for any whisky, and rarer still for one made this far south.
This is peat at its most disarming. Where heavily smoked malts announce themselves, this one only whispers — a fine grassy smoke woven through fresh golden fruit, orchard apple, and a clean lift of sea-salt spray. Balanced, unhurried and quietly complex, it's the bottle to pour for anyone curious about peat but wary of the bonfire.
The Willowbank reserve is finite, and this expression is all but spent: fewer than thirty bottles remain. Twenty-five years isn't something you can simply set aside and make again — when these are gone, they're gone for good.