It is released worldwide this week, available from Clos19.com and various specialist whisky retailers at an rrp of £710.

Creator Dr Bill Lumsden said: “After a quarter of a century in the cask, you’d be forgiven for imagining that Ardbeg 25 Years Old would have lost some of the hallmark Ardbeg smoky punch. I can assure you it hasn’t.

“And yet there’s also a remarkable complexity and elegance to this whisky that I find utterly captivating. It’s unmistakably Ardbeg, but unlike any Ardbeg you’ve tasted before.”

It was distilled during the 1990s, when Ardbeg was only producing a trickle of new make spirit every year.

Lumsden and his team decided that this rare whisky was so exquisite that it should be bottled and released as a permanent expression, albeit in limited quantities.

Ardbeg 25 Years Old is presented in a unique gun metal bottle encased in a metal cage.