Ardnamurchan AD/03.21:02

The first time Ardnamurchan appeared on this site, its product wasn't even a legal whisky, rather a wild, weird 1-year-old spirit. Adelphi's distillery now makes actual single malts, more than 80 of them as per Whiskybase, one of which has hit the 10-year-old mark this year. Scotland's most westerly distillery produces peated and unpeated spirit with a variety of fermentation times (72-120 hours), usually using Concerto barley.

Today's drink is an actual whisky, a single malt, that mixes the peated and unpeated spirits, as well as bourbon and sherry casks. The numbers stand for the bottling date (03.21 = March 2021) and the batch number (02) for the year.

Distillery: Ardnamurchan
Owner: Adelphi

Region: Way Out West Highlands

Age: NAS

Maturation: 65% bourbon casks, 35% sherry (oloroso and PX) casks

Bottling Date: March 2021
Alcohol by Volume: 46.8%
Chillfiltration? No
Colorant? No
(thank you to Doctors Springbank for the sample!)

NOTES

"Young" isn't a great tasting note, so I'll try to provide specifics. The nose is yeasty and floral, with bubblegum and Play-Doh notes. Cinnamon sticks and sour apple candy fill out the middleground, and a pretty white peach note awaits in the back. It gets more perfumed with time.

The palate is very sweet, with lumber, vanilla, yeast, and almond extract. Most of those notes fall away after 30+ minutes, leaving behind a raw, floral eau de vie.

It finishes like a flower blossom and cinnamon stick infused simple syrup.

WORDS WORDS WORDS

While this is a considerable improvement over the 2018 AD spirit, it still has a Craft whisky palate. The delightful nose, though, shows lots of promise. I'm not sure of its age, but if it's 3-4 years old at this point, then it should be quite a thing at 10+ years. Then again, that's just a guess, because no two spirits act the same, and every Master Distiller/Blender/Executive has a mind of their own. Good luck, Adelphi.

Two more Ardnamurchans to follow...

Availability - It's still around, 3 years later
Pricing - $65-$75

Rating - 77