The World’s Most Adventurous Whisky Is Only Available at Sea

Whisky fans are famously willing to travel far and wide to meet their beloved beverage of choice. Want proof? Each year, Scotland welcomes over 2 million tipple tourists, enough to designate Scotch visitor centers as the country’s top attraction. 

But an exclusive new bottling called Navigator is flipping the script on this fraternization. It’s the world’s first single malt to endure a pole-to-pole journey in the barrel. After accruing some 56,314 nautical miles at sea (equivalent to 6,115 miles), it’s now available solely to guests aboard Hurtigruten Expeditions cruise ships. Never before has a whisky traveled so far to meet its fans.

The story of Navigator begins in Islay, Scotland — a rugged Hebridean isle so historically linked with scotch that it’s been dubbed, “Whisky Island.” The liquid was crafted at one of the island’s 10 working distilleries. HX declined to disclose its exact origins, but its particular style of peatiness would point a knowledgeable palate toward Caol Ila. 

“After aging for seven years, the cask was entrusted to our crew aboard the MS Spitsbergen in 2023,” says Stefan Engl, vice president of hotel operations for HX Expeditions. “From there, it embarked on a voyage across some of the most dramatic and untouched landscapes on the planet.”

This is hardly an exaggeration. Departing from Islay, the barrel rolled on towards Svalbard — the northernmost permanently-settled archipelago on earth — to the North Pole. It then threaded the Northwest Passage through the High Canadian Arctic, around Alaska, before skirting the Pacific edge of the Americas on its way down to Antartica. 

After more than a year of sloshing around the Seven Seas, the whisky eventually returned to its Islay birthplace for bottling, with enough liquid remaining to fill just 222 total bottles. It’s now available onboard four of the cruiseliner’s most advanced expedition vessels including the MS Fram, MS Spitsbergen, MS Roald Amundsen, and MS Fridtjof Nansen. 

Hurtigruten Expeditions provided the following tasting notes on the liquid: 

Nose: Floral and citrus notes with vanilla, orange peel and subtle peat smoke. 
Palate: Butterscotch, fresh citrus and tropical fruits, maritime peat smoke and salted caramel. 
Finish: Long and evolving with waves of mixed fruits and light integrated smoke.  

Prolonged time at sea seems to have introduced a subtle windswept brine to the tasting experience. This is accentuated, naturally, when sipped on the top deck of a cruise ship, backdropped by icebergs and glacier-carved earth. 

“The idea for Navigator Whisky was born from a passion for exploration,” adds Engl. “We wanted to craft a whisky that wasn’t just exceptional in flavor but had a story as rich as the landscapes our ships sail through.”

And though it does still drink much like a classic peated Islay single malt, you won’t find the word “Scotch” emblazoned anywhere on its charcoal-tinted label. To be classified as such, a whisky must be made and aged entirely within Scottish borders. Given the lengths it’s traveled to get in their glass, however, Scotch fans should be more than willing to meet it halfway.