Ardnamurchan 2017 Paul Launois
AD/Venturer Club Release 2026 | 56.7% ABV
Score: 8/10
Something Special.
TL;DR
The Glenbeg gift that keeps on giving
Long Time No Speak
In the time it’s taken for Christmas to come and go, January blues to fade and February hope to swell, the world has gotten itself in one big damn mess.
The perfect distraction for all the woes we read and see, must surely be whisky. Well, I’ve been distracted elsewhere.
As a creative mind tasked with inventing objects that will exist forever, my mind is constantly spooled up, a perpetual flywheel of research, investigation, discovery and output. What that flywheel connects to varies.
It can range from being connected to a yawning chasm of nothingness into which despair and frustration are thrust perpetually; the echoing sound of my own anguished cries returning unanswered. All the way to a eureka moment of clarity that makes me wonder if anyone else has even been unplugged from The Matrix until now. The flywheel spins, always.
More often than not it’s a balance between the two extremes, with ideas arriving now and again, duly processed, taken to final execution and either forged or forgotten. For a time, almost five years now, the flywheel has been connected to multiple streams, including Dramface, where I’ve transferred some of the creative energy into manifesting over 190 reviews and 10 features. I look back on this body of work with incredible pride.
However, recently the flywheel has been connected to just one output. From the ether a transmission of ideas and paths to explore arrived unannounced, that has surprised me such that I have been desperate not to lose grip, through distraction.
A rare thing it is, to find ideas appearing in the frontal cortex unprompted, and without much interaction they translate, almost fully realised, onto a page. For a professional designer, moments like these are sacred, fragile and must be handled with deference. Connections slip. Focus grips. The world quietens. Solitude is sanctuary.
The signals from the ether are beginning to fade, much to my relief - it’s equal parts thrilling and exhausting being used as a conduit for the spectral frequencies. What remains is a bank of work that I reckon is my best to date, things that will roll out over the coming years, long after I’ve grown fatigued with their nuances, and manifest through the turbulent process of manufacturing and launching products to market.
With the flywheel’s load relieved, I find myself thinking about whisky again, and what it means to me in this new light of progress and fresh ideas. It’s been a cold winter, but the warming springtime wind is blowing.
That said, a guilt of being absent is looming heavy, even though our Commander-in-Chief never demands frequency. The disconnect is looming heavy - it feels like I’m out of the loop and looking inwards through a misted window. My calendar clashing with most whisky events this year also upsets me, without any way to reconcile it, other than to watch from afar.
My frolicking with ethereal spectres has come at the compromise of the community I’ve loved and cherished for years, probably at a point in time where it was most needed - to keep the passions high, the interest keen and the loudspeaker of promoting those doing great things alive.
The universe speaks, we just have to listen; I suppose in a way that’s what I’ve been doing, and despite my absence from whisky perhaps it was just meant to be - a mechanism to take a breather and reassess what it was that excited me about whisky in the first place.
Beyond finding my whisky - the liquid that resonates with my palate and desires - the thing that I considered most exciting about whisky was seeking out and experiencing new things. I’d hazard that, once my whisky was found, that excitement waned.
However, I realise now that, greater than all the discovery and flavour experiences, is the thrill, and sense of place, in being part of something. Of being in the circle of discovery and the buzz of the new. It’s fine to discover things by yourself, but when it’s a shared experience, the connection is ten-fold. And I’ve missed that greatly.
Neist Point Lighthouse, on a breezy February morning.
Although I might still be relatively fresh into whisky, I definitely feel like I have gained some really good, useful knowledge over the fun years of exploration and discovery, certainly where Ardnamurchan Distillery is concerned. A healthy base of reference that, despite my quietness, has been deployed every week in unpublished insight; a companion as I went about my evenings of dimensions and tolerances. Ardnamurchan has been the lubricant to my midnight tweaking of chamfer angles and thread pitches. The character is woven into every facet of my work.
The decaying of the ethereal broadcast has come at a good time, given the Bank of Doog has been tied up over the last quarter. The universe speaks: it’s a difficult thing to recognise in tempore praesenti.
When news arrived that the Ardnamurchan Distillery AD/Venturer Club was to receive the opportunity to experience a Paul Launois double cask release, my ears flapped, the creaking purse strings were pulled, and the old pencil was sharpened.
It’s an exciting time for Ardnamurchan. Days after my club bottle arrived on the island, a general release Paul Launois - the first since 2024 after last year’s allocation was taken up with the AD/10 launch - was launched with around 5,700 bottles available worldwide. Never before now has there been more available of what is considered, by many excited about Ardnamurchan, to be their finest finish.
When I first became interested in Ardnamurchan as a distillery to follow closely, the Paul Launois bottlings were chased unicorns - elusive and expensive when caught. I’ve been lucky to have tried them all, as well as a few single casks and samples, which has fed into my overall opinion that Paul Launois casked Ardnamurchan goes together like Bert and Ernie.
Review
Ardnamurchan 2017, AD/Venturer’s Club Release, Paul Launois, Casks #133 & #182 - 8 years old, 56.7% ABV
£65 available to AD/Venturer Club members
It’s rich, golden and dreamy. At the altar of contribution, where impact on the scale of whisky excitement is measured, Ardnamurchan need only hold aloft a bottle of their uniquely casked whisky, and no further words need be said.
Unique casks: a custom programme of cask construction offering customers with cash and a vision the chance to create their very own profile of Chardonnay, then deployed into a bottle for that all-important fermentational fizz bomb.
Like whisky, these oak casks are toasted, charred, or fiddled with to create unique profiles of wine, and it is those casks, some 18 per year, that make their way to Glenbeg to be filled with crystal clear clearic.
A product of connection; a moment in time between Alex Bruce and a friend who mentioned that Julien Launois was doing some pretty hip stuff, that has blossomed into something legendary. It’s existence is evidence enough that Ardnamurchan Distillery do things differently; it’s as much a product of people, as it is a product of the land, and it’s a playful place too - like whisky should be.
An experimentation in cask play, where Launois wine is matured and disgorged, cask sent to Glenbeg to be filled with new make, then wine, then whisky, is currently in progress with results as yet unknown. The fleet-footed inclination to fiddle, is what makes Ardnamurchan admirable; their humbleness likewise. But I’ve spilled enough digital ink extolling the virtues behind their whisky enough to sink the Isle of Skye.
As the distillery ages magnificently, in stark contrast to those drinking their products, so too does the whisky mature in ever more surprising ways. Age is no guarantee of quality, but there’s an exception to every rule. We’re in year 12 of whisky maturing at Glenbeg, and having experienced their 10yo honest malt - plain old Bourbon matured single cask whisky - I can hand-on-heart attest to the delicacy, the floral beauty of base aged Ardnamurchan whisky: it’s not something to underestimate.
But, I’m an Ardnamurchan Ultra, painfully so: take what I say from the perspective from which it’s shouted. It works for me. It might not work for you. And that is absolutely ok.
Score: 8/10
Something Special.
TL;DR
The Glenbeg gift that keeps on giving.
Nose
Subtler than other PL releases. Slow release. Citrus pear turnover. Rich Tea biscuits. Herbal - something basil. Wee fleeting matchbox. Hint of dirtiness. Grass. All the sweetness - fudges, raisin fudge, treacle fudge. Cedar wood, toasted. Darker - something cola based. Oak - toasted. Oak - bookcase (very small)
Palate
Cola - flat. Darker feeling. Less bright zing-busters, more mood lighting. Heather honey. Porridge - oaty. Not as biscuitty as 2023 release but still plenty Digestives/Rich Tea. Cherry syrup - bit of rapeseed oil here too, like Cask #90. Nice biscuits - chocolate ones: Bahlsen Choco Leibniz. Wee bit of pickle juice. Zinger, fudge, delicious.
Has the salty, coastal character but laced with the Reims amplifier - more salty, more spray…y. Rocks, minerals, but licked alongside a toffee apple. Oak appears - bookcase oak.
The Dregs
I’ve dug out three other examples of Paul Launois - the 2023 release, the 2024 release and the simply divine Cask #90 Visitor Centre Exclusive, for reference and giggles. The long and short of it is as thus: the 2023 edition is big, sharp and oaky, the 2024 edition is a lot more rich, fruity, juicy, sweet and laced with citrus and Cask #90 is just gangbusters - oak, rapeseed oil, toffee, citrus, effervescence.
The AD/Venturer Club Release sits pretty much in the middle of all this gorgeousness. It’s not as sharp as 2023. It’s not as sweet as 2024. It’s not as powerful, oily or combustible as Cask #90. It’s more subtle, darker you could say, too - not as bright lights, more mood lighting.
It offers all that I could ever want from amber liquid - sweet, decadent, fudgy base with salty sea spray, zingy lime fizz, crisp Nice biscuits and an enveloping silkiness of mouth that’s moreish, and dangerous at 56.7% ABV.
Against other whiskies it flattens anything in its path. Against other Paul Launois, it floats in their midst. Only the Single Cask #90 remains as yet unbeatable. I have to say that of all the releases tried, the 2024 is the one that’s sticking to me the most, but then I turn to the Club Release and it’s a subtler take on the character. All joyous.
There’s no smoke without fire, and I have to say that for me, considering the 120 different expressions of Ardnamurchan whisky tried to date, I think Paul Launois is quickly becoming my preferred take on the Glenbeg liquid (apart from a 10yo single cask bourbon sample that blew me away and then further away again). With this bottle, on top of all the previous Launois releases it’s getting harder to pick. It’s simply excellent whisky.
What more is there to say other than, counter to what I’d thought might happen with such exposure to repeated character, Ardnamurchan whisky continues to impress me, the distillery continues to forge their own path and, the most important point at such a time, continues to release fantastic whisky at reasonable prices.
The Old Peat Road.
Score: 8/10
Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. DC
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