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UAT April - Photo UploadEnding 05.05.2025
Live Auction
Live Auction
April 2025 AuctionEnding 05.05.2029
59.4-60.9%
2 x 70cl
UK + % VAT
Closed
15 Mar 2021

Bottle Details

Port Charlotte Dramfool Jim McEwan Signature Collection 1.2 & 2.2 

Founded in 2015, Dramfool is a small independent bottling label created by Bruce Farquhar. Many of these releases have received high praise, and the collection features some interesting distilleries. Whisky Auctioneer is delighted to have partnered with the company to launch Jim McEwan's Signature Collection. The range comprises of nine releases, each containing three single cask bottlings from Jim McEwan's private collection. 

Despite having come out of retirement to take on a new challenge at Ardnahoe distillery on Islay, his enduring legacy (for the time being at least) is his success in rejuvenating the neighbouring Bruichladdich when it re-opened in 2001. Born on the island, Jim began his career at Bowmore, starting out on 1st August 1963 at the age of 15 as an apprentice cooper, he worked his way up to cellar master at the distillery's famous warehouses before moving to Glasgow at the age of 28 to train as a blender for parent company, Morrison Bowmore. After eight years, Jim returned to Islay at the request of Suntory to become its new distillery manager at Bowmore before ending his illustrious 38 year career as an ambassador for not only Islay's oldest working distillery, but the island itself. When the offer was made to reopen and manage the redundant Bruichladdich, Jim leapt at the chance to reawaken this mothballed giant, and revitalise both it and its importance to the island. Over the next decade and a half, he helped transform the image of the distillery, breathing new life into its existing stock with a pioneering new wood policy, and reviving the historic tradition of peated single malt production by introducing the Port Charlotte and Octomore brands, and of course, the acclaimed The Botanist gin.

It was during his illustrious tenure at Bruichladdich that Jim acquired the private collection of casks that forms this exclusive Dramfool range. Each release will feature a single cask of each of the three Bruichladdich single malts.

Bottles 1-20 and 88 in the auction are presented as 2-bottle lots including their equivalent number from the second release before it has even launched.

Winners of bottles #1-20 and #88 will also receive first refusal on that same bottle number in subsequent releases, presenting aspiring collectors with the opportunity to complete the full Jim McEwan Signature Collection in the same bottle numbers.

Release number one pays a fitting tribute to Jim's use of exceptional quality wine casks to revitalise the old Whyte & Mackay-distilled stock when he took charge at the distillery twenty years ago. They had such an influence that their use is now a cornerstone of Bruichladdich production.

This 2007 vintage Port Charlotte single malt was aged for 13 years in a first-fill Bordeaux red wine cask and bottled in February 2021. The cask originally held wine from an ancient vineyard whose recorded history goes back to the Roman times and is recorded planting vines in 1423.

\"One of my top creations for sure\"

-Jim McEwan

The cask was made by internationally renowned Bordeaux cooperage Maison Demptos. A family business with over 200 years’ experience they have created the unique Bordeaux barrel used by many, if not all, of the top wine producing chateaux in the area. One of 299 bottles.

The second selection highlights Jim's favourite wood type, first-fill bourbon. Release 2.2 is a 2010 vintage Port Charlotte single, aged for 10 years in a first-fill bourbon cask from the Jim Beam distillery in Clermont, Kentucky. The world's number one bourbon brand, the important influence of Jim Beam casks on Scotch whisky is prevalent across the breadth of the industry. One of 257 bottles.

This lot has a 2 bottle shipping fee.

Age
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Vintage
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Cask type
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Region
Islay

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