Richard-ModernDrinking
Ardnamurchan Spirit 2018 AD
Spirit — Highland, Scotland
Reviewed
March 13, 2019 (edited March 14, 2019)
Ardnamurchan is a new distillery from the owners of independent bottler Adelphi and has a couple of claims to uniqueness. Firstly, it’s located on the most westerly peninsula of the British mainland, so visiting it will require some commitment. Secondly, it claims to be the greenest distillery in Scotland, as all its power and heat come from local renewables and its byproducts are recycled. Fine, but how does it taste? Given its youth and anemic production volumes, the distillery hasn’t yet bottled anything old enough to count as whisky, but it is previewing its spirit with this blend of distillate aged from one to 3-1/2 years. (Under Scotch rules, that makes it a one-year-old, even though the oldest spirit in the blend would count as whisky if bottled alone.) The distillery is splitting its output between peated and unpeated, making each for six months of the year, and this release is a combination of both from a mix of PX and Oloroso sherry casks. Some of those casks come from the same place that supplies Glenfarclas, so it should be good quality wood. Indeed, the nose is distinctly sherry, with lots of orange notes. In the mouth it’s very rich and feels more like a liquor than a whisky, but it’s clear that most of the flavor is coming from the casks. The spirit was designed to be very light for extended aging, so it’s hard to get a sense of how it will taste in a few more years and in less active casks. Still, it’s tasty and worth a try, and didn’t feel out of place in an evening otherwise devoted to tasting Adelphi bottlings.
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@Richard-ModernDrinking yeah—-I think you’re right, the one I have is a single cask version
@PBMichiganWolverine That might have been the single cask I saw online.
@LeeEvolved and this is why I have so much respect for the likes of Daftmill. They waited 12 years before releasing their first, and that too as a micro-local ingredient one
@Richard-ModernDrinking i have a Kilchoman 12 yr old. I don’t think it was widely marketed. Was from a U.K. retailer as a private release label.
@LeeEvolved Looking forward to reading your more considered opinions. The Adelphi rep told me it would be a couple of years before they bottle a three-year-old. These new distilleries need to lay down most of their initial distillate if they want to be around for the long run. Even Kilchoman doesn’t have enough matured stock yet to release a 12-year-old, beyond the odd single cask, because they were making so little when they started.
Good to know that this still solid even at such a young age. I’ll be supplying samples to @PBMichiganWolverine, @Generously_Paul, @Scott_E and @Telex in a week or two. It’s a shame they didn’t just go ahead and bottle the 3.5yo juice and declare it their first whisky.
@Generously_Paul something tells me that’s me 🤓
@PBMichiganWolverine very interesting. I think it will be wasted on all but the nerdiest of the whisky enthusiasts among us.
@Generously_Paul it’s a new technology that allows you to track the entire logistics from which barley was used to who bottled it to where it was sold finally. This is the same technology that’s under the hood for Bitcoin.
@Generously_Paul something to do with tracking the barrels used in each bottle
@PBMichiganWolverine elaborate...
And also the first distillery to use blockchain technology