Bowmore Devil’s Cask
2026 10yo Release | 56.6% ABV
Score: 7/10
Very Good Indeed.
TL;DR
Personally, the best official Bowmore I’ve bought
The Devil returns - as does availability
There is a lot of negativity in the mainstream media around Scotch, but it needs a degree of qualification.
It is mainly around the business dealings of things and if you focus only on distilleries going into insolvency, stopping production, redundancies and strikes, you find a degree of instability in some areas - but should that be a surprise really?
Any business where you need to lay down stock for a minimum of three years is, by its very nature, massively capital-intensive, which affects the newer entrants trying to forge a path and differentiate their product. At the other end of the scale, the true global players have a need to show continued growth in turnover or profitability, so where the achievable price for their product isn’t at the stretch end of their forecasts, it can hardly be a surprise when they start to trim costs.
However, there is no such negativity around availability of whisky to your average drinker, and certainly no negativity at the end of the market that focuses on taste. There is immense choice and, while anomalies exist, you can certainly see prices starting to descend. Prices on secondary markets continue to fall, and it isn’t difficult to see that from auction sites which helpfully publish graphs showing historical prices for particular bottles over time.
This choice actually just becomes increasingly bewildering; there are just so many interesting things released on a weekly basis. In my view, whisky in general has rarely been easier to get hold of – in my location anyway.
And so this brings us to the latest release from an Islay giant, the oldest distillery on the island and the one where many whisky fans are less than enamoured with its own core product.
The church which sits at the top of the hill in Bowmore is an imposing feature of the town, and that’s the intention. Before I had even travelled to Islay, my mum had told me the story of why the church had been built in the 1760s as a round structure – precisely because the locals wanted to ensure that there were no corners in which the Devil could hide. Religion was a massive part of the life of locals at the time. The specific legend that supposedly attaches to these Bowmore releases is that the Devil did indeed turn up at the Round Church in Bowmore but - with no corners to hide in - the locals were able to chase him down the hill and into the distillery where he slipped inside a cask to hide before it was shipped to the mainland. It's a great wee story; an interesting legend that should draw people into the history of the distillery, the church and the town. It also seems like exactly the sort of story that a marketing department might keep in a drawer for a moment of need.
And in this case, it isn’t the first time that the Bowmore marketing team have pulled this legend out for some use.
I wasn’t into whisky at the time, but in 2013 I believe you could walk into any whisky retailer and buy a ten-year-old, cask-strength, first-fill sherry Bowmore for, it seems, £50.99. With six thousand bottles worldwide, it sold out and was followed by a second batch in 2014, and then a third in 2015.
Eleven years on, and it's back. Bowmore launched a new Devil's Casks 10-year-old on Thursday (for a certain tier of whisky punter). Alongside it is a 22-year-old built from two casks held back from the original batches and left alone for another decade plus.
Building interest and real, or implied, scarcity aren’t new concepts. The interest and speed of sell-out for the Bruichladdich releases this year (Old Skool, Yellow Submarine and Greener Still) must have been noted directly over Loch Indaal by Bowmore. But these are very different beasts and there is currently a massive degree of confidence in the whisky community around Bruichladdich products. The Dramface Top 40 shows that divergence – Bruichladdich solidly revels in its third most popular distillery position, whilst Bowmore languishes at number 35 and is begging for a change of direction. But is demand there for the once legendary Bowmore? Writing this four days after launch, there still seems to be plenty of availability; conversely, the Bruichladdich special editions sold out in hours. We don’t know how many bottles are in this release, but it certainly doesn’t seem to have flown the way others have.
The 22-year-old Devil’s Cask goes on sale this month. I don’t actually want a bottle of the 22-year-old; at £380 it is not in my price bracket, but my problem is that even if it was, you can't just buy it. It goes to a ballot. Most whisky fans are used to ballots and freely accept them as an alternative to the release scrum, potential bots and website crashes. But at that price the 22-year-old is in the sphere of the collector and flipper; there aren’t a lot of those going to be opened. A further catch with this ballot is that you only get an entry if you've already bought the 10-year-old. Buy one bottle for the chance to pay £380 for another.
Both are exclusive to the specific retailer until 1 December when they turn up at the distillery shop. If I wanted a bottle of 22-year-old Bowmore, I suspect that the Living Souls 22-year-old version is likely to be a far safer bet and, at £160, be something you are planning on opening.
The secondary market makes a useful reality check. A bottle from the original Devil’s Cask series still goes at auction for somewhere between £130 and £210. Against £51 eleven years ago, that does look like a gain, but knock off inflation and auction fees and nobody's retiring on it. The most recent auction I checked shows a 2015 Devil’s Cask sold for £140. Like everything else on secondary, they are trending down.
I have picked up this 10-year-old because I am interested to see what Bowmore has done with it and in the vague hope that I get a good Bowmore Official Bottling at a half-decent price.
Review
Bowmore 10yo, The Devil’s Cask, Small batch 2026 release, 56.6% ABV
£70, exclusive to The Whisky Shop until December in the UK
This new Bowmore 10-year-old spent its life in first-fill Oloroso before being finished in first-fill PX; it isn’t clear how long for though. This is stated to be cask strength (though presumably possibly batch strength) at 56.6% ABV and, remarkably for an official Bowmore, without artificial colour or chill filtration.
Score: 7/10
Very Good Indeed.
TL;DR
Personally, the best official Bowmore I’ve bought
Nose
It’s an attractive nose, with loads of dark fruit, cherries, blackberry, gentle warm apple and treacle-like sweetness coming from the PX. There’s a bit of saltiness in the back which ties it in nicely and balances the sweetness.
Palate
The first try of this one was a tsunami of spice. It was a neck-pour, and it was still a bit cold. Subsequent drams haven’t elicited that same level of heat, but it is immediately spicy every time. It’s dark and heavy, packed with fruited cake, dark chocolate, treacle, prunes, cinnamon and even a bit of menthol. It’s oily with a thick mouthfeel, long but subtle legs and a gentle spice staying all the way to the end.
Peat-wise, yes, it’s there, so don’t go near it if you don’t like peat, but it’s not strongly peated; it’s a subtle and restrained smoke.
This is a bold, sherry-matured dram and, while it’s memorable and moreish, it’s not what I would call a sherry-bomb.
It doesn’t drink at the 56% ABV level either, you get the sense it isn’t a 40% pour, but it does come across softer than the mid-50s.
The Dregs
I always have a degree of trepidation when I buy a hyped-up whisky, or a more expensive bottle: will it be a disappointment? In this case it wasn’t a disappointment at all; in fact, it’s the best official Bowmore I’ve had. The PX influence is quite strong, and I think some could think that’s drowning out the spirit, but to me there was a good level of balancing spice. I am hit-or-miss on sherry cask whisky, but I do tend to lean towards PX, so this may not be for you if you aren’t a sweet and syrupy PX fan.
For this 10-year-old, the £70 actually seems like a fair price. Bowmore’s standard 12-year-old sherry cask from their core range is available at £62, but that’s had the life diluted out of it all the way down to 40% rather than the 56.6% for this release. It’s worth considering what this is like against a couple of others.
The Living Souls 7-year-old that Archie looked at earlier this year, a bottle I also have, and Archie’s assessment at a 7/10 is fair on that one - but it is a bourbon cask and therefore not fully comparable. This, Devil’s Cask, in my opinion, is better. Is it an 8/10? Possibly not, but in a world where Dramface allowed quarter points I think it could be a 7.5/10.
I recalled the Bowmore Vault Edition that I wrote about way back in May 2025, and it was a good time to revisit this dram which has been languishing over the last year. At the time I scored it as a 6/10 and coming to it entirely fresh again I stand by that - the Devil’s cask feels a step-up. I hope for more steps up with future Bowmore releases.
As for the upcoming 22-year-old – I have no intention of parting with £380 for the pleasure, but I will look with interest at how it lands.
Bowmore has stated this is the first of several visits into their archives. That's genuinely good news; no one doubts that Bowmore has one of the most enviable cask inventories in Scotland. The problem, in recent years, has been what they do with it when it leaves its cask.
Hopefully, the next releases are bottles that people can walk into any retailer and buy.
Score: 7/10
Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. CC
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At the point of this article’s publication, Bowmore currently sits in position #35 in the Dramface Top 40.
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