The Islay 2025 Release in Samaroli's annual programme is a single cask of Caol Ila matured under the bottler's "publishing house" discipline — non-chill-filtered, natural colour, bottled in Scotland at 45% volume with only 414 bottles. MATURATION: a single first-fill Madeira hogshead drawn from the 2025 selection, after seven years in oak. The wood brings tropical fruit, candied citrus and a winey lift that contrasts the soft, medicinal peat of the underlying Islay distillate without overwhelming it. Smoke remains the architecture; tropical sweetness fits inside it. SERVING: pour neat into a Glencairn at room temperature; the Madeira-smoke axis rewards a slow nose before the first sip. Five to eight drops of cool water lift the tropical fruit. At the table it pairs with smoked duck, dark-glazed pork ribs, or a long-aged Manchego where the salt-and-fruit profile finds traction. With a cigar, reach for a Honduran or Nicaraguan habano-seed.
Tasting notes
Deep coppery amber with ruby glints.
Sweet peat smoke, candied orange peel, grilled pineapple, toasted almond, smoky toffee, warm spices, dried apricot and spiced raisin.
Rich and elegant: smoked sea salt, burnt liquorice root, walnut cake, spiced dried fruit, velvety peat and a bright winey lift
Long and evolving: smoked fruit, dark chocolate, burnt toffee and citrus zest lingering.
Italy's first major independent whisky bottler — founded by Silvano Samaroli in 1968, today based in the wine country of Frascati just outside Rome — has always treated single-cask Scotch as a critical anthology rather than a stock list. Each release is a curated edition, the cask chosen for what it can reveal about a distillery rather than for volume. The 1960s and 1970s Bowmore and Laphroaig bottles released by the house now appear at auction at five-figure prices. Since Silvano's death in 2017 the team continuing his work has published a new annual selection — Islay, Speyside, Highland — under the same uncompromising discipline.
