Dorchadas, the Fife-based rum brand with a ‘rebellious approach’ to ageing, has released Washed Ashore 03, a 15-year-old single cask bottling recently crowned International Distilled Rum of the Year at the 2025 Scottish Rum Awards.
Distilled in Barbados using a blend of both pot and column still molasses rums in 2010, this liquid is said to have started life with ‘serious backbone’.
It then spent five years in an ex-bourbon cask in the heat of the Caribbean before being brought to Scotland, where it lay for a further ten years in an English whisky cask on the cold, salt-heavy coast.
“The shift in climate didn’t tame it, it transformed it,” declared Dorchadas. “The result is a collision of tropical depth and Scottish swagger, bottled at a confident 56.4% ABV.”
Scotland is emerging as a serious rum region, as its producers explore techniques beyond the category’s traditional warm-climate ageing. So-called ‘double-continent’ maturation is claimed to deliver flavour profiles that are rare in the global market.
Washed Ashore 03 typifies this approach – a fifteen-year-old, molasses-based single cask aged in both ex-bourbon and single malt whisky wood offers an uncommon technical focus and singular achievement.
MD of Dorchadas Rum, David Taylor, said: “The Washed Ashore series is where we push rum maturation to its limits.
“Each cask begins life in the heartland of rum traditions – Barbados, Jamaica, Mauritius and beyond – where regional fermentation profiles and distillation methods combine with tropical ageing, giving the spirit its backbone.
“But the real shift happens when we bring those casks to the UK. Cold-climate maturation slows the oxidative process and mellows extraction from whatever we rerack into, whether that’s ex-sherry, single malt whisky, or refill bourbon.
“You get deeper integration of congeners, more tension between spirit and wood, and flavour development you simply cannot replicate with tropical heat,” said Taylor.
“Two climates, two approaches to maturation, and two distinct stories meeting in one cask. These rums aren’t just finished, they’re fundamentally transformed… and because each cask’s journey is unique, nothing in the Washed Ashore series can ever be repeated.”
Dorchadas Rum’s core range has already gained industry recognition, with its Amber Spiced picking up Silver at both the London Spirits Competition and the Scottish Rum Awards; its Solera White taking Silver at the 2025 Scottish Rum Awards; and the first Washed Ashore release scoring an impressive 94/100 at the IWSC, adjudicated by industry legend Ian Burrell.
The brand’s rums are listed in some of Scotland’s top venues, including renowned Edinburgh cocktail bar Nauticus, Michelin-starred Haar in St Andrews, and The Kinneuchar Inn, named the second best pub in the UK in the 2025 Good Food Guide.
