Cù Bòcan Creation #9: Tomatin's 17-year popcorn whisky

Tomatin has released Cù Bòcan Creation #9, the oldest whisky yet in its experimental series, a single malt built around a Manzanilla sherry cask finish designed to taste like salted cinema popcorn.

The release is limited to 3,800 bottles worldwide at 46% ABV and £45 a bottle, available from the Tomatin Distillery website and specialist whisky retailers from October 12.

Seventeen years across two cask paths

Seventeen years and a sherry cask turn a popcorn joke into a serious whisky.

Creation #9 blends whisky matured along two different routes for at least 17 years. The larger share, about 80 percent, spent the entire period in American virgin oak. The remainder aged 13 years in refill hogsheads before a four-and-a-half-year finish in Manzanilla sherry casks, the pale, bone-dry style made from Palomino grapes in Sanlúcar de Barrameda.

Jamie Muir, Tomatin's distillery manager, said Creation #9 "set out to prove that patience pays off in the most unexpected ways." He credited the Manzanilla casks with adding "a salty, savoury edge" that balances the sweetness from the virgin oak.

Cù Bòcan, Gaelic for "ghost dog," is Tomatin's experimental sideline: a lightly peated single malt distilled in limited winter batches, separate from the unpeated whisky the Highland distillery makes the rest of the year. Past Creations have finished in Japanese shochu casks, Moroccan Cabernet Sauvignon barrels and tawny port pipes.

The format sits in a crowded year for single malt attention. Japanese labels such as Yamazaki have taken competition trophies this month, while Scotland's smaller distilleries lean on limited runs and story-driven packaging to stand out.

A whisky built around popcorn

The brand describes Creation #9's nose as vanilla, honey, caramel, salted popcorn and toasted almonds, with coastal salinity running underneath. The palate brings lemon zest and crisp orchard fruit, before a long, spiced finish of dry oak and sea air.

Muir called it "the perfect excuse for a movie night," a line that fits the release's styling: a red-and-white carton with diagonal stripes modeled on a cinema popcorn box, engraved with the smoke motif that runs through the wider Cù Bòcan range.

Tomatin's one standing Cù Bòcan release, the Signature, is also bottled at 46% ABV and sells for £45, matured in bourbon, oloroso sherry and virgin oak. Creation #9 is sold alongside it, not in place of it, aimed at collectors who already follow the series rather than newcomers to the brand.