Our look at the no age statement Islay winners covered six Golds, but the island had plenty more to show at this year’s Scotch Whisky Masters. The competition is run by The Spirits Business and judged blind, and Islay came away with two Master medals, 10 Golds and one Silver across all of its flights.
The remaining six winners either carry an age statement or sit in the premium and cask strength brackets, and both of the island’s Masters are among them. The producers behind them include a distillery founded in 1816, one that filled its first cask in 2018, and two companies that do not distill at all.
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So, let’s take a look at the best of the rest from Islay at the Scotch Whisky Masters 2026.
Kilchoman Rockside 11 Years Old
Award: Master
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Category: Single Malt: Islay – Aged Up to 12 Years
Tasting Notes: Orange, lemon peel, fragrant elderflower, honeyed sweetness, maritime smoke, citrus, tropical fruits, barley sugars, toffee apple, salted caramel sweetness, peat smoke, butterscotch, notes of walnuts, lingering juicy citrus, stone fruits
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READ THE STORYFind Your Next Bottle: $62 / £50
Rockside 11 is the first whisky with an age statement to join Kilchoman’s core range, and the first time the distillery’s 100% Islay concept has been made permanent rather than appearing as an annual limited run.
Kilchoman was founded by Anthony Wills in 2005 at Rockside Farm on the Rhinns, and the barley for this bottling is grown on the farm, floor malted on site, and peated with Islay peat to around 20 ppm. Wills bought the farm outright in 2015, which gave the distillery the whole harvest to work with.
It arrived in early July 2026, at 46% ABV, non-chill filtered and natural in color, from roughly 80% ex-bourbon and 20% ex-sherry casks, with a recommended price of £55.
Judge Nicola Carruthers found “lots of smoke, as to be expected with a nice meaty barbecue flavour. The sweetness is complementary to the smoky meat flavours.”
Port Askaig Aged 8 Years
Award: Gold
Category: Single Malt: Islay – Aged Up to 12 Years
Tasting Notes: Charcoal smoke, lemon oil, pine, heather honey, grilled grapefruit, sweet ginger snaps, dark chocolate, melon, prosciutto, chilli spice
Find Your Next Bottle: $63 / £44
When Elixir Distillers launched Port Askaig in 2009, the range started at the older end with cask strength, 17 and 25 year old bottlings. The 8 year old was added in 2016 and has served as the entry point since.
Elixir was founded by Sukhinder and Rajbir Singh of The Whisky Exchange, and the company does not name the distillery behind the whisky, describing the source only as undisclosed Islay distilleries. Caol Ila is the common assumption among drinkers, but it has never been confirmed.
Bottling is at 45.8% ABV without chill filtration or added color, from a mix of bourbon barrels, toasted American oak, sherry butts, and refill hogsheads.
Lagavulin 16 Year Old
Award: Master
Category: Single Malt: Islay – Aged Between 13 and 18 Years
Tasting Notes: Peat, salt, seaweed, sweetness, oak
Find Your Next Bottle: $80 / £62
Lagavulin is the oldest distillery on this list, and the 16 Year Old its most iconic expression. The distillery was founded in 1816 by John Johnston on Lagavulin Bay, on the south coast between Laphroaig and Ardbeg, although illicit distilling had been going on around the bay since at least 1742.
The Mackie family bought it in 1862, and Peter Mackie went on to build the White Horse blend around the malt in 1890. Diageo owns the distillery now. Barley comes from Port Ellen Maltings along the coast, fermentations run long, and the stills are worked slowly.
The 16 Year Old became the standard bottling in the late 1980s as part of the Classic Malts range. It is bottled at 43% ABV and matured largely in American oak, with a portion in European oak sherry casks.
The judges described it as having “lovely smoke notes; engaging and oily with a light sweetness and lingering smoke”.
Port Askaig Aged 15 Years
Award: Gold
Category: Single Malt: Islay – Aged Between 13 and 18 Years
Tasting Notes: Toasted vanilla, BBQ oranges, sea breeze, sea salt, lemongrass, earthiness, brown sugar, light spice, melon sprinkled with rock salt lingers, sooty smoke, sweetness
Find Your Next Bottle: $148 / £110
The 15 Year Old is a marriage of just 30 refill hogsheads, and Elixir puts the annual outturn at around 900 bottles.
It was announced in March 2025 alongside a 25 year old and a second cask strength batch, and it took over from the 17 Year Old that had come before it. The whisky is sourced from a distillery on Islay’s north coast, bottled at 50.5% ABV, with a recommended price of £112.
Refill hogsheads on their own are unusual within the range, since most Port Askaig bottlings bring together several cask types.
Master blender Oliver Chilton said that “a wonderfully soft style was chosen for our 15-year-old, a result of using refill wood, where oxygen developed more herbal notes alongside the lemon and smoke.”
Berry Bros & Rudd Classic Islay Traditional Cask
Award: Gold
Category: Single Malt: Islay – Premium
Tasting Notes: Smoke, green orchard fruits, honeydew melon, malted barley, earthy tones
Find Your Next Bottle: $62 / £45.95
Berry Bros & Rudd has traded from 3 St James’s Street in London since 1698, which makes it Britain’s oldest wine and spirit merchant. The firm created Cutty Sark in 1923 and sold the brand to Edrington in 2010, and most of its whisky work now goes into single cask and small batch bottlings.
The Classic Range arrived in 2018 and was reworked in April 2024 by spirits curator Felix Dear, who brought in two Speyside age statements to sit alongside the Islay and Irish releases.
Islay Traditional Cask carries no age statement, and the distillery behind it is not named. It is bottled at 45.3% ABV and sells for around £45.
The judges found it “bright, oily, fruity and complex”.
Ardnahoe Cask Strength
Award: Gold
Category: Single Malt: Islay – Cask Strength
Tasting Notes (Batch 2): Coastal brine, earthy peat, rich cocoa, orchard fruits, herbal tea, salted caramel, smoke, citrus
Find Your Next Bottle: $100 / £67
At five years old, this is the youngest whisky on the list by a wide margin, which follows from Ardnahoe filling its first cask in November 2018.
Batch No. 1 went on sale on October 30, 2025 at £65, drawn entirely from first-fill bourbon barrels and bottled at 60.9% with no chill filtration and no added color. Batch 2 reached retailers in spring 2026, again aged five years in first-fill bourbon, and most listings put it at 61%. The results do not say which batch went in front of the judges, and both were on shelves by then.
Distillery manager David Livingstone said that “the third bottling in our core range is a very special one and a significant moment for the distillery.”
The judges described it as “softly medicinal and sweet”.
What Do You Make of the Results?
Both of Islay’s Master medals came from this group. One went to a distillery that has been running since 1816, and the other to a farm distillery that only made its farm-grown whisky a permanent fixture this summer. The remaining four Golds were shared between a young distillery, two independent bottlings and a London wine merchant.
Have you tried any of these six? Are there any you would like to get hold of, and what do you make of the awards? Let us know in the comments.
