Dunville’s 26 Year Old Palo Cortado: Cask 1199
Available
This whiskey is currently available.
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- Style:
- Single Malt
- Age:
- 26 years old
- ABV:
- 53.2%
Dunville’s 26 Year Old Palo Cortado
Single Malt Irish Whiskey · Cask 1199
16 years in ex-bourbon, followed by 10 years in an ex-Palo Cortado Sherry cask.
- ABV
- 53.2%
- Price
- £450
- Bottles available
- 130
- Available from
- 30 November 2026
Get priority access on 30 November.
We’ll confirm the opening time a week beforehand and email your purchase link privately, giving you access two hours before the broader membership.
Everyone can register. Club membership is required to buy. A bottle is not guaranteed.
Join the main mailing list for the general release email.
The oldest whiskey ever to bear the Dunville’s name.
An extraordinary cask.
A relationship built over years.
When the team at Echlinville offered our club the chance to release this whiskey, I knew it would become an important part of our story together.
We have already shared a 19-year-old Oloroso single malt, an award-winning 12-year-old Palo Cortado and Dunville’s first single malt finished in a port cask. Each bottle has given our members a closer connection to the people behind the Dunville’s name.
Now, for our fourth collaboration, they have entrusted us with their oldest whiskey ever bottled. Twenty-six years in wood. Just 130 bottles for our members. It is a rare, rare privilege, and I’m deeply grateful to everyone at Echlinville who has made it possible.
Barry
A decade in Palo Cortado.
For its first 16 years, this single malt matured in ex-bourbon wood. It then spent a further ten years in an ex-Palo Cortado Sherry cask, resting on the dunnage floor of Echlinville’s warehouse on the Ards Peninsula.
With the peninsula surrounded on three sides by water, those final years unfolded in a distinctive coastal setting. The dunnage warehouse and the long chapter in sherry-seasoned wood give this whiskey a journey rooted in the place where it matured.
Some of you may already have enjoyed a little of its history. Whiskey drawn from cask 1199 contributed to Dunville’s 21 Year Old Palo Cortado, named Irish Whiskey of the Year at the Irish Whiskey Awards in 2024 and 2025. Until this release, that is how whiskey from this cask has reached the market.
Our release gives members the opportunity to experience cask 1199 in its own right, at 26 years old.
Tasting notes.
Nose
Dark chocolate and warm fruit compote lead the way, with a little sweet tobacco and polished leather emerging as the whiskey opens in the glass.
Palate
Rich, rounded fruit meets cocoa and a lively note of fizzy cola-bottle sweets. Baking spices build through the sip, balanced by the savoury depth of mature oak.
Finish
A long, warming finish, with fading fruit sweetness giving way to dry cocoa, gentle oak spice and a lingering tobacco note.
The bottles that brought us here.
Oloroso
The oldest whiskey our club had released at the time.
Explore the release →
Palo Cortado
Winner of the Single Malt 12–15 Years category at the 2024 Irish Whiskey Awards.
Explore the release →
Ruby Port
Dunville’s first single malt finished in a port cask.
Explore the release →What makes Palo Cortado special?
Palo Cortado is often described as sherry’s happy accident. Traditionally, a wine destined to become a delicate Fino would reveal an unexpected character as it developed. The cellar master would recognise its potential and guide it towards a different future: a rare sherry combining the aromatic finesse of Amontillado with the richness and body of Oloroso.
There is something wonderfully serendipitous about that journey. Its unusual balance of elegance and depth can bring together hazelnut, citrus peel and a gently savoury complexity. That distinctive character makes Palo Cortado casks particularly intriguing for whiskey maturation.
For cask 1199, the connection runs deep: ten full years in Palo Cortado sherry wood, following sixteen years in ex-bourbon. A remarkable amount of time for the whiskey and the cask to find their own expression together.
A name with a remarkable history.
Dunville’s traces its roots to Belfast in 1808. Its name became closely associated with the Royal Irish Distilleries and a whiskey trade that reached far beyond Ireland.
After the business disappeared in the 1930s, its bottles became reminders of an earlier era. The team at Echlinville revived the name in 2012, bringing Dunville’s back to whiskey drinkers and building a new reputation around carefully selected single malts and exceptional casks.
This release adds another chapter to that continuing story.
A special bottle.
A pleasure to share.
This is an expensive whiskey, and I know a full bottle will sit beyond what some members can, or wish to, spend. I respect that completely.
Our club’s releases will always span different price points. When an opportunity like this comes along, I believe we should embrace it. Being offered Dunville’s oldest whiskey ever bottled is a rare privilege, and I wanted our members to have the chance to enjoy it.
If you would love to experience it with others, a few friends or fellow members could come together and share a bottle. I would love to see it opened around a table, with time to enjoy what those 26 years have created.
Get priority access on 30 November.
We’ll confirm the opening time a week beforehand and email your purchase link privately, giving you access two hours before the broader membership.
