Ardnamurchan AD 04.21.03

Ardnamurchan are a new distillery owned by the independent bottlers Adelphi. Adelphi have a lofty reputation as 'Indys' famed for sourcing good casks. Particularly Sherry casks. Their bottles tend to fetch a fairly high price but are in demand because they are generally very good quality.

Ardnamurchan is the most westerly distillery on mainland Scotland. They are situated on a peninsular in the central highlands. They were founded in 2014. Instead of bottling at 3 years they waited a little longer until the spirit was around 5 years old before starting to bottle it.

They don't have a core range at present. Each release (and there are a few!) has a bottling date instead. Just to make it even more confusing for us Brits they seemed to have adopted the North American method of numbering a date. So this bottle 04.21.03 was bottled on the 3rd of April 2021. It is bottled at 46.8% abv. Non-chill filtered and natural colour. A QR code on the label when scanned tells me it is made up of 65% bourbon casks 35% sherry casks. People report that there are batch differences in each release

Hopefully as they get older stocks Adelphi will adopt a more understandable age stated ranged of 8, 10, 12 year old etc. .

The bottle cost me £45. This is the standard price for an Ardnamurchan. The distillery insist they do not intend to increase prices as their stock matures.

Onto the whisky!

Neat

Nose - Sherry forward despite being predominantly bourbon cask matured. Ginger biscuits and all spice. Some peat that comes across as wet stones. Also some sea salt. So wet pebbles on a beach then! Also a slight, creamy lactic note

Palate - Arrival is fairly brief. Some heat. A lot of spice. Ginger, pepper and chilli. The finish is long for a young whisky and the peat comes in on the finish as a mineral note.

With a little water (about 2mls in a 30ml pour)

Nose - the peat is much more noticeable nose now. Still mineralic peat. But also quite grassy. The heat and spice has dialed down several notches. Some clotted cream, beeswax. Quite a busy nose.

Palate - the peat has moved from the finish to the arrival. It is very different on the palate with water. The spice has all but disappeared. Left behind is a gentle ginger biscuit note that takes you from the development to the finish. A lactic note again and a long drawn out but gentle finish.

Overall

I've mentioned peat a fair bit in this review. But I don't want to give anyone the impression this is a peat monster. There is definte peat there but it is just part of what is going on. This is no Laphroaig. At a push I'd say it was lightly to medium peated.

In a recent discussion @NamBiest asked for alternatives to Springbank. I mentioned Ardnamurchan. To be clear you couldn't mistake this for a Springbank. What I meant was like Springbank this is a little out on it's own and even at this young age is defintely a charcter malt. It has a little bit of everything going on but somehow it all works.

I've sent samples of this to @RianC and @Timp and I'll be interested to hear their take on it. But honestly I think for it's age and price point it's a cracker of a whisky. I think when Ardnamurchan reaches the point where they can start to release 10, 12, 15 year old whiskies they will be very in demand. I'd say to anyone who hasn't tried Ardnamurchan if you can get a bottle for a sensible price. Give it a try. I'm confident you'll be impressed.