There's just one distillery on the island of Jura, off Scotland's west coast, and this is one of the delectable products from that fine establishment. The name here is a tribute to the reputed tendency of island residents (population: 200 or so) toward superstition. Maybe that disposition rubbed off on George Orwell, who lived on Jura in the late 1940s while completing the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Or maybe not.
The bottle here is adorned with a glued-on ankh, an ancient cross symbol with an oval loop rather than a straight vertical line above the horizontal line. (Picture a stick figure with no legs, just a single line for a torso.) The cross is supposed to symbolize life, and the distillery declares on the product packaging that if you hold the bottle with the ankh situated in the palm of your hand, supposedly "good fortune will surely follow." We're not informed as to the source of this claim, apart from "they say," but the distillery does like to play off the island's mystique, so take it all with a grain of sea salt.
I'd agree about the good fortune part, though, assuming you're pouring that dram for yourself, because fine whisky is on its way to your mouth. It's billed as "lightly peated," though that should be read as a relative description. There's solid smokiness here, if not quite comparable to the heavily peated single malts of the nearby island of Islay.
That smoke is far from dominant, however, and more than matched by the luscious, thick texture and oaky-rich flavours of this 43-per-cent alcohol bottling. It's silky and dense, with notes of toffee, dried fruits, baked apple, honey, bold spice, toasted bread and smoked meat. Available in Ontario at the above price, $69.99 in British Columbia (on sale for $64.99 until June 3), various prices in Alberta, $35.73 for 200 ml in Saskatchewan, $74.95 in Manitoba, $79.75 in Quebec, $76.99 in New Brunswick, $70.60 in Prince Edward Island, $69.99 in Nova Scotia, $77.26 in Newfoundland.