Bruichladdich just dropped two of the most loaded releases in its recent history, and they’re not new expressions. They’re old ones, brought back with better whisky and a lot more context.
The Port Charlotte PC5 Redux and the Octomore Black Art Redux are the centrepieces of the distillery’s Rock’ndaal festival releases limited to 2,500 bottles each, dispatching from 15th June. One costs £75. The other costs £325. Both are worth understanding before you decide.
Port Charlotte PC5 Redux: The first dram the distillery ever made, revisited
On May 29th, 2001, the Bruichladdich stills ran again for the first time after the distillery was refounded. The first liquid off those stills was heavily peated spirit what would eventually become the Port Charlotte range. Five years later, that spirit was bottled as PC5: the distillery’s first-ever release as a reopened operation, and the moment Port Charlotte’s signature sweet barbecue smoke profile got its name.
The PC5 Redux is a reimagining of that original recipe. Same 40PPM peat. Same American oak maturation. Same 5-year age statement. Bottled at cask strength 63.5% ABV and non-chill filtered, which matters because it means nothing has been stripped from the spirit for the sake of clarity.
What you’re drinking is Port Charlotte in its formative years: the raw, unpolished version of what the distillery would spend the next two decades refining. Master Blender Adam Hannett describes it as vibrant and smoky with bright citrus and orchard fruit, where the American oak supports rather than dominates letting the barley and the Atlantic climate come through.
The original PC5 featured former Master Distiller Jim McEwan on its label. This one features Hannett. That’s not a cosmetic choice. It’s the clearest possible statement that this is an interpretation, not a replica one distiller’s reading of another’s founding moment.
At 63.5% ABV, this is going to need a few drops of water unless you know exactly what you’re doing with cask-strength peated whisky. At £75 for 2,500 bottles, it’s also among the more accessible releases Bruichladdich has made in recent years.
Octomore black art redux: when the distillery hides the details on purpose
The Octomore Black Art is the one Bruichladdich release where the distillery deliberately withholds information. No barley varietal. No distillation date. No specific maturation profile. For a distillery whose entire brand identity is built on radical transparency, this is the deliberate exception and that tension is, arguably, the whole point.
The original Octomore Black Art was introduced in 2016 by Adam Hannett at his inaugural Fèis Ìle Masterclass, his first major public act as Head Distiller. It sold out. When OBA Concept_01 was released a year later in 2017, it sold out almost immediately. The concept marrying Black Art’s mystery with Octomore’s super-heavily peated spirit had proven itself.
The OBA Redux doesn’t break the silence on what’s in the bottle. What Hannett describes is a spirit of immense power with silken, architectural refinement: floral elegance and tropical sweetness meeting persistent smoke and tempered oak. That’s a harder flavour profile to picture than the PC5’s more legible citrus-and-smoke story. That’s intentional.
What the bottle does reveal: 54.2% ABV, non-chill filtered, natural colour, matured entirely on Islay, bottled using Islay spring water. The label carries a visual of the Coultorsay warehouse, where thousands of casks are ageing without their stories yet fully explored which is about as on-brand a statement as Bruichladdich has ever made.
At £325, this isn’t an impulse purchase. It’s a commitment to a style of whisky-making that values mystery as a feature, not a bug.
What these two releases actually tell you about Bruichladdich right now
These aren’t random anniversary expressions. They’re a very deliberate pair, and the contrast is the message.
The PC5 Redux is where the distillery came from: transparent, documented, dateable. A 24-year-old story with names attached McEwan founded it, Hannett revisits it. You know exactly what went into the cask and roughly when.
The OBA Redux is where the distillery gets to break its own rules: opaque, undated, deliberately unnamed. The same Master Blender, doing the opposite thing.
Releasing them together for Rock’ndaal the distillery’s own music festival on Islay is a neat trick. One bottle celebrates origin. The other celebrates the freedom from it.
Full product details and pre-order links at bruichladdich.com/collections/rockndaal.
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