The Bowmore® 50-Year-Old Vaults Series is an iconic collection of single malts began life in the No. 1 Vaults during the 1960s, a golden era of distillation in Bowmore’s history, producing some of our most collectible bottlings.
The Bowmore® 50-Year-Old Vaults Series is an iconic collection of single malts began life in the No. 1 Vaults during the 1960s, a golden era of distillation in Bowmore’s history, producing some of our most collectible bottlings.
50-Year-Old Vaults series
The Bowmore® 50-Year-Old Vaults Series is a collection of some of the world’s rarest whiskies.
Time is savoured at Bowmore and each outstanding and highly coveted expression in this collection pays tribute to our history of taking time to perfect the art of whisky maturation.
The unique, sea-buffeted atmosphere inside the oldest scotch maturation warehouse in the world has created three perfectly balanced whiskies full of flavour, with each whisky offering an individual taste journey through their time maturing here on Islay in manzanilla sherry, wine and bourbon barrels.
Black Bowmore® 1964 - The Last Cask
First distilled on 5 November 1964 at Bowmore Distillery, this incredibly rare whisky was the last of the Black Bowmore® liquid to be released and the first chapter in the Vaults series. The pinnacle of Bowmore’s whisky making pedigree, over the years this expression has become one of the rarest and most sought-after single malt whiskies ever created. Sandy MacArthur, grandfather of current distillery manager David Turner, worked on the original bottling of this liquid over 50 years ago. After four releases, the first in 1993 and the fourth in 2007, one last cask of Black Bowmore was rediscovered in the corner of the No.1 Vaults and released in the summer of 2017. Only 159 hand-made bottles of bottles of Black Bowmore 50-Year-Old were made available internationally.
Bowmore® 1966
An exceptional expression, Bowmore 1966® vintage celebrates a unique year in Bowmore Distillery's heritage. This whisky was distilled in the same year that the Islay distillery first officially bottled Bowmore as a single malt, and it also marks the year that former Bowmore manager Eddie MacAffer joined the distillery. Bowmore 1966 is packaged in a handmade crystal decanter, with sterling silver decoration, housed in a Scottish oak cabinet containing five silver tree rings depicting the five decades of the single malt’s maturation. Released in November 2017, and limited to just 74 bottles, this is a truly rare expression.
Bowmore® 1965
The liquid of Bowmore® 1965 was one of the first to pass through Bowmore’s then-new steam heated stills in 1965, benefitting from smoother heating and greater control, enabling the distillery to craft a spirit that was perfectly primed to mature over many decades. Bowmore 1965 demonstrates the meticulous aging process of Bowmore Distillery. Only 232 bottles of the rare Bowmore 1965 have been produced and are available from December 2018.