Ardnamurchan distillery turned ten in the summer of 2024 and to celebrate this milestone the distillery launched a unique batch of Ardnamurchan 10 Years Old whisky.
This 15,000 bottle batch was made up of 100% first-fill bourbon casks, where roughly half of the batch was subsequently finished, for over one year, in Champagne Paul Lanais barriques.
The spirit is 100% unpeated and bottled at 50% ABV.
Nose: The nose opens with an overtly tropical offering; replete with ripe mangoes, pineapple cubes, lots of honey. There are baked bananas, brown sugar, figs, and wine gums. With time, we go a little deeper into darker tones of crème caramel, toffee, and meringues with white chocolate.
Palate: Oh, hello there, waxiness! The theme of honey continues, backed up by linseed oil, warming spices, gingerbread, fresh pineapple, and cedar. Oily, waxy, showing great depth!
Founder, Alex Bruce described the whisky made at Ardnamurchan as being of its environment.
“We chose Arndamurchan, this remote, rugged, highland, west coastal peninsula, we chose it to build a distillery, not because it would be impossible to get to and all that sort of stuff, but most importantly we chose it because of the climate and what it is and what it can do to whisky.
“We’ve built a distillery, we’re trying to make the best possible spirit that we can but everything else we’re handing over to the environment. If I was to copy and paste Ardnamurchan somewhere else in Scotland or somewhere else in the world, you would get a very different whisky. The profile that we are naturally getting out there is a very maritime, very coastal profile.”
