A Campbeltown Malt for Under $60, the Arran 14 Returns, and the Top 5 18-Year-Old Whiskies

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This week's picks come from Hi Proof in Fullerton, CA — five bottles worth a look right now. Mix of value plays, a couple of high-proof options, a curiosity in Scotch rye, and a high-end exclusive release at the best price I've seen on it. Two of these have been featured before; the rest are new to the deals section.

A blend of all five Campbeltown malts — Springbank, Longrow, and Hazelburn from Springbank Distillery, Kilkerran from Glengyle, and Glen Scotia — vatted and bottled at Springbank in ex-bourbon and ex-sherry casks. There aren't many blended malts that justify their own slot in a deals section, but this one does. For the price, it's probably the most direct affordable way to taste the region's center of gravity. Buttery, lightly maritime, gentle peat, salted caramel, ginger loaf. Drinks above its price every time. If you're trying to understand the region without going down a $90+ Springbank rabbit hole, this is the bottle.

ABV: 46% | Cask: Bourbon and Sherry | 700ml

Price: $57.99 (regular $69.99)

Typical US Market Range: $75–$85.

Savings: $15–$25 off typical retail.

Who's this for: Anyone who wants a full survey of Campbeltown in one bottle, and anyone who's been priced out of Springbank itself.

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The first rye distilled on Islay, and one of the more interesting recent Scotch experiments. Mash bill is 55% rye and 45% malted barley — all grown within an 11-mile radius of the distillery across 15 local farms. Seven years on Islay, in a mix of first-fill bourbon barrels and virgin American oak that's been toasted rather than charred. Sits somewhere between an Indiana-style rye and a young grain-forward single malt: cracked black pepper, ground ginger, baking spice from the rye, with vanilla and creamy malt rounding it out. Officially classified as Islay single grain Scotch whisky. Not a peat bomb, not a bourbon imitation — its own thing.

ABV: 50% | Cask: First-Fill Bourbon and Virgin Toasted American Oak | 750ml

Price: $54.99

Typical US Market Range: $60–$70.

Savings: $5–$15 off typical retail, and under the $59.99 distillery MSRP.

Who's this for: Anyone interested in what Scotland does with rye, anyone who appreciates Bruichladdich's experimental side, and any rye drinker curious to see the grain handled under Scottish maturation rules.

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Featured this one before and worth flagging again — this is the best price I've seen on it. The second in Oban's recent US-exclusive 15-year-old series, following the 2025 Oloroso/Palo Cortado release, which was actual cask strength at 110.6 proof. This one initially matures over 10 years in American oak hogsheads and finishes for 4+ years in American oak Port casks, bottled at 104.2 proof. Coastal Oban character — sea breeze, soft malt, gentle salinity — layered with red berry, dark cherry, soft sweetness, and a touch of pepper from the Port. Not true cask strength like the 2025 Oloroso/Palo Cortado release, but meaningfully more intense than the standard 14, and a finish that actually integrates rather than sitting on top.

ABV: 52.1% | Cask: American Oak Hogsheads, Finished in American Oak Port Casks | 750ml

Price: $104.99

Typical US Market Range: $130 MSRP, $130–$145 at most retailers.

Savings: $25–$40 off typical retail — best price I've seen on this release nationally.

Who’s this for: Oban fans who want more body than the 14, and coastal malt drinkers curious about a Port finish that doesn't smother the distillate.

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Worth knowing what this actually is before you buy it. Officially a blended whisky from Nikka built from Yoichi single malt, Miyagikyo single malt, and Coffey grain from Miyagikyo — over 100 different component whiskies marrying in used casks for several months before bottling. But Nikka's own website confirms it doesn't meet the new (April 2024) Japanese Whisky labeling criteria, which is the giveaway. Nikka has owned Ben Nevis Distillery in Scotland since 1989, and Ben Nevis malt is generally believed to be one of the reasons From The Barrel carries more weight and malt depth than many drinkers expect. So this is a "Japanese whisky" with Scotch in it — and that's part of why it punches the way it does. Bottled at 51.4% by design (not cask strength, despite the suggestive name) to maximize flavor impact. Honey, orange peel, baking spice, dried fruit, a wisp of smoke, and a remarkably smooth integration for the proof. The US-format 750ml exists because the original 500ml bottle isn't legal for whisky here.

ABV: 51.4% | Cask: Marriage of multiple used cask types | 750ml

Price: $60.99 (regular $64.99)

Typical US Market Range: $75–$85.

Savings: $15–$25 off typical retail.

Who’s this for: Drinkers who have heard the hype but want to know what's actually in the bottle, plus anyone after a high-proof blend that overdelivers for the money.

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The standout American whiskey pick this week. B525 is the second 2025 release of ECBP, aged 11 years and 6 months — the oldest batch since September 2023 — and bottled at 126.2 proof. Heaven Hill's standard bourbon mash bill of 78% corn, 10% rye, and 12% malted barley. Released last May to strong reviews and quickly moved off most shelves at MSRP; finding it now near retail is the deal. Dark jammy fruit, brown sugar, spiced peaches, molasses, black licorice, burnt caramel, espresso, and dark cherry through a long oak-driven finish. The alcohol integration at 126.2 is the impressive part — it doesn't drink hot for the proof. ECBP releases drop three times a year (January, May, September); the May 2026 batch is out now, so seeing an older batch still on shelves at this price is the move.

ABV: 63.1% | Mash Bill: 78% Corn, 10% Rye, 12% Malted Barley | 750ml

Price: $59.99

Typical US Market Range: $75 MSRP, $80–$100 at most retailers when found.

Savings: $20–$40 off typical retail.

Who's this for: Anyone tracking ECBP batches and wanting one of the better recent ones, and anyone after a high-proof bourbon with real age that still has room to play with water.

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The 18-year-old single malt segment has gotten expensive. This is the age where real maturation starts to show what it can do — where cask influence, oxidation, and time build complexity that younger whiskies can't replicate. Bottles that sat at $80–$100 five years ago now regularly push $150–$200+. This list is about the best combinations of genuinely excellent whisky and prices that still make sense.

Honorable Mentions

Springbank 18 — Would be number one if price and scarcity weren't part of the equation. But it's expensive everywhere except at the distillery, and finding a bottle at retail is an exercise in frustration.

Longrow 18 — Same tier. Would sit at one or two on pure quality, but it's temporarily discontinued while stock matures, and was already scarce and pushing past what the value equation could support before that.

GlenDronach 18 Allardice — Great whisky, but the price has climbed past the point where the value holds relative to other options on this list.

anCnoc 18 and Speyburn 18 — These hurt. The old 46% versions would likely have made the top five. But the owners lowered the ABV to 40% to chase mass-market appeal — objectively worse whisky at a higher price. They alienated the enthusiast community, and I doubt they gained much from casual drinkers who weren't buying 18-year-old single malts in the first place.

5. Tomatin 18

One of the most underrated 18-year-olds in Scotch. Fifteen years in bourbon hogsheads followed by a three-year finish in first-fill Oloroso sherry butts, bottled at 46%. The bourbon backbone gives it orchard fruit, honey, and vanilla, and the sherry finish layers in dark chocolate, dried fruit, cinnamon, and a long dry oak finish with a touch of pepper. Tomatin is one of the largest distilleries in the Highlands but flies completely under the radar for most single malt drinkers — which is part of why the pricing hasn't caught up to the quality. At UK pricing, where it regularly sits around £100, this is good value for an 18-year-old with this much going on. Even at US retail (~$130–$150 depending on the retailer), it significantly undercuts most of its peers.

4. Arran 18

The crown of Arran's core range. Sherry and bourbon casks at 46%, balancing rich oak influence with Arran's citrus-forward, slightly tropical spirit. More affordable from international retailers than US shelves — still pricey either way, but the quality justifies the spend. If you want to understand what Arran does at its best, this is the bottle.

3. Bruichladdich 18 (Re/Define)

This one probably lands higher for me than it would for most people, and I'm fine with that. Primarily ex-bourbon with a small component of Sauternes and Port casks, bottled at 50% — unpeated Islay at its most elegant. Honey, butterscotch, tropical fruit, toasted oak, and the mineral backbone Bruichladdich is known for. It can sometimes be found below its RRP, and when you catch it near or under $150, the value argument gets very strong. The Re/Define series is Bruichladdich proving that unpeated Islay can stand next to anything.

2. Deanston 18

One and two are interchangeable. If you've been reading this newsletter for any amount of time, you know where I stand on this bottle. Fully matured in American white oak ex-bourbon barrels for 18 years, bottled at 46.3%. This is the best ex-bourbon whisky on the market. Honey, vanilla, barley sugar, gingerbread, orchard fruit, and a dry, spicy finish that keeps pulling you back. The Whisky Exchange named it Whisky of the Year in 2022. Ex-bourbon maturation lets distillery character come through most clearly, and Deanston 18 is the bottle that proves the argument. At UK pricing, where it's regularly found for around $100, this is one of the most absurd values in aged Scotch.

1. Ledaig 18

An easy number one. Sixteen years in ex-bourbon followed by a two-year finish in oloroso sherry — heavily peated, maritime, complex, and unique. Sherried smokiness, sea salt, orange peel, coffee, tobacco, black pepper, and a long finish with liquorice and smoke at the tail. The Whisky Exchange named it Whisky of the Year in 2023 — one year after Deanston 18 took the same award. Tobermory Distillery on the Isle of Mull doesn't get the attention of the Islay distilleries, but Ledaig 18 is competitive with anything coming off that island. At UK pricing, where it also sits around $100, it's not just the best value in the 18-year-old segment — it's one of the best values in Scotch, full stop.

This week's feature: the Coravin wine preservation system. Yes, it's about wine — but stay with me, there's a whisky angle worth your time.

One of the underrated things about whisky is that an opened bottle just doesn't go bad. You can crack a Springbank 10, pour two ounces, re-cork it, and come back six months later. Wine doesn't work that way. Open a bottle of Bordeaux on a Tuesday and by Friday it may already be undrinkable. That single reality is part of why I shifted from wine to whisky years ago — I wanted to be able to sample broadly without feeling like I had to drink the whole bottle within a few days to avoid wasting it.

The Coravin system solves that problem. For cork-sealed still wines, a thin needle passes through the cork, you pour out as much wine as you want, then argon gas replaces what you removed. When the needle comes out, the natural cork reseals. The bottle isn't opened in the normal sense, so oxidation slows dramatically rather than starting the usual countdown of a pulled cork. The wine stays well within its drinking window, with only slow, gradual changes over time — you can come back one, two, three weeks later and it's still in great shape. The needle system works best with natural cork and is less ideal for fragile corks or heavy sediment, but Coravin also makes a cap replacement for screw-cap bottles and has a separate system for sparkling wines.

For me, the practical use case is this: my wife often wants a single glass of wine with dinner. Before Coravin, that meant either she opens a bottle and works through it alone over the next several days, or we both commit to it and I skip my whisky pour. Now I can pour her a glass, have one with her if I'm in the mood, then switch to whisky — and the bottle is sitting there in essentially the same condition next week. It's also useful when I want to compare wines side by side without committing to opening three bottles at once.

If you're a whisky drinker with a partner who prefers wine, or someone who occasionally wants to drink wine but doesn't want the pressure of finishing the bottle — this is one of the rare wine gadgets that actually changes drinking behavior instead of just cluttering a drawer.

For full transparency: I reached out to Coravin, not the other way around. I was already curious about the system, tried it first, and only discussed a partnership after confirming it solved a real problem in my own house.

15% off for Whisky Influencer readers through this link: Get 15% off here

David Thomas Tao reviewed this week's Bottles Worth Grabbing headliner — Bruichladdich's first rye, seven years on Islay at 50% ABV. He frames it as a genuine hybrid: the nose sits halfway between an Indiana-style rye and a young grain-forward single malt — sawgrass, white pepper, anise, fennel seed, clove oil, with toasted wood staves and blackstrap molasses drifting toward baking spice. The palate reads more clearly as rye — vanilla custard, sweet mint gum, root beer — and the finish carries through with Life Savers mints, light oak, and a hint of rose-infused simple syrup. David closes with a warning shot to American whiskey makers: there's serious competition across the pond.

Score: A- (Drinkhacker's letter-grade scale — roughly 90–93 on a 100-point conversion).

Full Review Here

My take: Good validation for this week's deals pick. What David captures is that this whisky doesn't file neatly under either category — doesn't drink like American rye, doesn't drink like young Bruichladdich. That's the reason to spend $55 on it. This is also the first release of the program, with more mash bills, cask types, and ages to come. If you like this one, you're getting in early on a series worth tracking.

Thijs reviewed the Torabhaig Taigh — the Isle of Skye distillery's first permanent core-range expression, and a milestone for a distillery still building toward an eventual 10-year-old. Matured in first-fill and refill bourbon casks with Madeira casks layered in, bottled at 46%. Coastal-leaning on the nose: nori, sea spray, iodine, wood smoke, honey, porridge. Thick and oily on the palate — mustard seeds, almonds, sultanas, sponge cake, candied lemon, light ashes with clean salinity. His read: the Taigh represents the Skye house style well, with well-tempered peat sitting at the center rather than dominating.

Score: 8.7/10.

Full Review Here

My take: The Madeira component is the move worth watching — fortified-wine finishes on peated spirit either work or smother the smoke, and Thijs's description of the salinity still cutting through suggests Torabhaig got the proportion right. 8.7 from Thijs is a real score — his scale runs tight. If you've enjoyed Sound of Sleat or earlier limited expressions, this is the new core to put on the shelf.

Jeremy revisited the Lagavulin Distiller's Edition on his "Revisit Wednesday" series. The DE is 16 years old at 43% ABV with an additional finishing period in PX sherry casks. Lagavulin's signature smoke is intact, with smoked pear, smoked cherry, and a sweet medicinal maraschino note on the nose. The palate gets weirdly specific — he compares it to a red-white-and-blue rocket popsicle, with cherry, cream soda, and a blue-raspberry-adjacent note. His standout call: at 43%, this is one of the most "crushable" peated scotches he's tried recently. Originally scored 88.5; drops a half-tick to 88 on revisit.

Score: 88/100.

Full Review Here

My take: Slightly different read on my end — the batch I had leaned the other way, with the PX adding a touch of bitterness that pulled it below the standard 16. At typical retail I wouldn't make a confident recommendation on either bottle. That said, "crushable" is exactly the right word for what this whisky does when it works, and Jeremy's framing nails what people who love the DE love about it.

If you've ever ordered a bottle from a European retailer and noticed it says 700ml instead of the 750ml you're used to seeing on American shelves, you're not imagining things — and you're not getting ripped off. The two sizes come from completely different regulatory histories, and the gap between them kept some of the world's best whiskies out of the US market for decades.

The story starts in the late 1970s, when the Carter administration pushed the US toward the metric system. Federal alcohol regulators converted spirits bottle sizes from ounces to milliliters, and the old standard "fifth" — one-fifth of a gallon, about 757ml — became the 750ml metric fifth. Regulators only allowed spirits in approved bottle sizes, which effectively kept 700ml bottles out of the US market entirely.

Meanwhile, Europe went the other direction. On January 1, 1990, the European Economic Community standardized spirits bottle sizes, with 700ml becoming the standard full-size bottle. The practical logic: 700ml divides cleanly into common bar measures. At 25ml, you get 28 pours. At 35ml, you get 20. No leftover, no ambiguity, no arguments about missing stock. Some also noted the commercial upside — same shelf price, 50ml less liquid, better margin per unit.

The result was a 50ml gap that created real problems. Every Scotch producer who wanted to sell in the US had to run a separate 750ml bottling line alongside their standard 700ml production. Big distillers absorbed the cost. Smaller independent bottlers and single-cask operations often couldn't justify it — and simply didn't export to the US. For years, some of the most interesting whisky in the world was locked out of the American market by a bottle-size regulation that had nothing to do with the liquid inside.

That changed in late December 2020, when the TTB published new regulations adding 700ml as an approved standard of fill for distilled spirits in the US. The change was partly driven by international trade concerns, including standard Japanese formats like 720ml and 1.8L, and partly by a broader push to reduce trade barriers. Some larger industry players pushed back on consumer-confusion grounds, but the TTB approved it anyway.

The practical impact has been significant. Independent Scotch bottlers, European craft distillers, and Japanese producers can now have their standard 700ml bottles properly imported and sold in the US without a special bottling run. You've probably already noticed more 700ml bottles on your local shelves. If you're ordering from international retailers like Master of Malt or TheWhiskyWorld.com, the bottle size itself is no longer the issue — though cross-border alcohol shipping still depends on the retailer, carrier, customs, and your state's rules. Worth keeping in mind when comparing prices: a 700ml bottle is about 1.7 ounces less than a 750ml, roughly one standard pour's difference. Not a dealbreaker, but worth factoring in when a European bottle looks like a bargain next to a US-market one at the same price.

One last note: the standard wine bottle remains 750ml in both the US and Europe. The 700ml split is spirits-specific — which is why the Scotch on your shelf might be a slightly different height than the wine next to it.

My take: This is one of those pieces of whisky infrastructure that most drinkers never think about but that shaped what was available to them for 30 years. The 2020 change is one of the more quietly important shifts on American whisky shelves — not because it changed the whisky itself, but because it removed a barrier that kept smaller, more interesting bottles from ever getting here. If you're seeing more independent bottlings and unusual expressions at your local shop than you did five years ago, this is one of the reasons why.

Isle of Arran Distillers has announced that the long-discontinued Arran 14 Year Old is back as part of the permanent core range, alongside a new core Arran 30 Year Old and refreshed packaging across the entire lineup. The 14 originally launched in 2010 as a step up from the 10, quietly developed cult status (Ralfy and Aqvavitae both championed it), and was discontinued in 2018. Its absence left a real gap in the lineup.

The return comes with an adjusted recipe — and this is the part worth paying attention to. The original 14 was built around a two-thirds American oak / one-third European oak profile, with fresh bourbon and sherry casks playing a major role in the final composition. The new 14 is matured primarily in bourbon barrels with an additional finishing period in rare Palo Cortado sherry casks. Bottled at 46% ABV, non-chill-filtered and natural color. Official tasting notes from the distillery point to rich fruit syrup, apples, and mandarin on the nose; salted apples, toffee, and mango on the palate; soft oak and a delicate saline finish.

The release also caps a strong year for the brand. Arran took Distillery of the Year at the Scottish Whisky Awards and just wrapped its 30th anniversary cycle. The new 30 Year Old is the distillery's first permanent expression at that age statement, drawn from sherry hogsheads dating to the earliest years of production. Refreshed packaging across the entire range leans into recycled Vista glass and more sustainable labeling.

My take: The recipe change is meaningful. The new 14 appears more bourbon-led, with Palo Cortado as the accent — a different bottle even with the same age statement and ABV. Given Arran's delicate, citrus-forward spirit, more time on bourbon should let the distillery character read more clearly. Could be excellent. Could also disappoint fans of the original.

The Palo Cortado choice is the strategic signal. It's the rarest of the major sherry styles — drier, nuttier, more oxidative, and less obviously sweet than the standard sherry-finish playbook. Glenmorangie, Oban, GlenAllachie have all leaned into Palo Cortado recently, and Arran's signaling they want a seat at that table. Personally, I haven't connected with Palo Cortado casks in past tastings, so I'm watching this one with curiosity more than conviction.

US pricing and availability aren't confirmed yet. If your usual retailer imports Arran, ask about expected delivery.

That's it for this week.

If this landed for you, forward it to someone who'd be into it. More people on the list means better deals, better content, and more leverage when I go knocking on doors for exclusive offers.

If you grabbed one of the bottles, tried a Coravin, or have thoughts on the 18-year-old rankings — shoot me an email. I read every one.

And if you're not already, come hang out on Instagram and TikTok — that's where I post the stuff that doesn't make it into the newsletter.

— Tim