Ardnamurchan Warehouse Release Cask 107
2015 Unpeated ASB | 41.9% ABV
Score: 7/10
Very Good Indeed.
TL;DR
As un-Ardnamurchan as you can get. Delicious whisky
Emergency on Planet Crystal
Like the inexorable slump into middle age and all of its spreads, or the sapping of colour and density from the scalp within which this throbbing jellied brain yelps, the inevitable worked its wicked way into my facehole.
I tried to ignore it, making a good fist of covering the issue with a barrage of pharmaceutical ordnance, but tucked away in the background of all the cut-scenes the spectre of pain loitered, patiently, chuckling at the futility of it all. My tooth, maintained daily but neglected professionally, was absolutely aching and I needed to see a dentist pronto.
We moved to the Isle of the Mist almost three years ago now, and with the geographical shift so too did our mindset adjust. Conveniences are now mild inconveniences - there’s no walking to a shop to pick up some milk anymore. There’s no bus or train to the big city to attend an event or two. Shopping arrives, or often doesn’t, via refrigerated van at the local shinty club car park. But that’s ok, because the payoff of living where we do, with the community and glorious distance to noise, more than offsets these minor tribulations.
Goodness knows I could spend the rest of this talking about the failings of the health system up here, or the heinous acts of indifference to those in dire straits, but I’ll neatly wrap it up in a brief summary: the NHS facilities in the western isles are so monumentally unsuitable, so completely scattershot for those in legitimate need, that they’re to be relied upon the same way you might a loan shark: considered only when the choice is between this and the great big darkness.
The number of crimes against humanity I’ve heard in just the three years of island living, of the scuffing against death at the incompetent hands of some island healthcare professionals, would make any normal person bristle and thank their lucky stars that they live in the modernised world.
Luckily for us it’s just been announced that NHS Scotland is being smooshed together from fourteen precincts of administration, into two - the Lowlands and the Highlands. The administration of island groupings of Orkney, Shetland and the entire Western Isles is to be determined at a later date, when there’s nothing else to do and it’s raining outside.
I accept it, given that we moved here under our own volition, without duress; and so my complaining must be given as much credence as moaning about the annual 320 days of rain here. But when your lower face feels like a balloon animal being constructed by a fingerless wrestler, and your vision is blurring because of the pain searing across your entire head, being told “nah, we’ve not got any space, try calling 111, LOL!” by the emergency contact at the local dentist after waiting an hour for their callback, a seed is nonetheless planted.
That seed grows into resentment, of letting the things that are inconvenient and upsetting prevail over the things that are magical and inspirational. A setting sun, casting its transient pastel spectrum upon the undersides of undulating clouds, a tumbling glow and somehow you’re inverted looking up at a flaming ocean; that stuff is punted while my head is exploding and no-one is helping me.
Someone could help me, in Inverness; three hour’s drive away, for a large sum of money. I jumped at the opportunity despite having to leave at 5:30am to make the appointment, and what a day it was too - tired apprehension followed by proximity tension, a giant disgorging of my mature spirit in the Westgate public toilets, followed by a frankly giddy relief from local anaesthetic, that slowly ebbed its way into an evening of pain I'd hazard ranks, on a scale of 10, around 4,000,000.
Not only was the molar drilled to its very core, navigating around the central yelping root nerve with deft skill, then filled with so much unspecified composite metal enough that the back-lit eyebrows of the masked vigilante were raised, because of how many refills the dental technician needed to prepare, along with some “exploratory needling” as the dentist called it; but my jaw had been stretched far beyond its certified diameter for an hour straight by a large-fisted gentleman. Once the high-strength anaesthetic wore off, my god. My God. My. God.
Today I write this relieved, a week on and pain free. Big Archibald did me a solid, I hope. Which is cause for celebration. I wonder if I'd made a stink and forced my way into the local dentist here, no doubt under a cloud of irritation, if such a deft, skilful and sensitive procedure would’ve transpired. I wonder if I’d be sitting here today with any form of cognisance, or a tooth. Who knows.
One could suggest that the health service here is as much geared towards tourism as is the commerce and hospitality, meeting the needs of Quirankles and squeaky bums, but for anything serious the helicopter is pointing at Raigmore. Probably because there’s no helipad at Broadford General, but let’s not broach that hot potato.
All of that pales into insignificance compared to what some people are currently going through. A sore tooth!? Some would grab that like it’s the rope to salvation, if they had a choice. I know it. I recognise it. I agree that my bleatings are just that: poor little chirps from a privileged person, but I do so to give you all a laugh and square up the solution to my pain.
Review
Ardnamurchan Warehouse Release 10yo, first-fill ASB (American Standard Barrel) Bourbon, filled 2015, 40 bottles only - 41.9% ABV
£50 - sold out
Despite the risks involved in drinking alcohol with amoxycillin - mainly a reduction in effectiveness of the antibiotic - and the very real risk of crapping your pants in public - after a day like I’d had I immediately turned to the only thing I knew could soften the blow: whisky. Specifically a rather interesting little Ardnamurchan. After all, if I’m going to blow my shorts in Portree square before a gaggle of confused German tourists, do it for the right reasons, yeah?
I’ve tried my share of Ardnamurchan whisky, some might say too much. Questions are appearing now, like “can you even be objective anymore?”, especially so given how friendly I’ve become with the team. If Ardnamurchan ever released a stinker, would I be able to call it out as a stinker, or would I fall on my sword to protect my friends?
Knowing the team and their integrity, I’d proffer that Macallan would sooner release their 18yo at £55 than Ardnamurchan would release something so heinous that I’d have to choose between defriending Connal Mackenzie to write the truth, or saying nothing and being called a chummy hack. I’ve been called worse mind you.
Case in point: I’ve never tried something like this - a whisky saved from oblivion through the magic of stumbling upon it by chance, and released at their customary £1/cl pricing of £50. Isn’t that what this is all about? Fleeting moments in time? Discovery? Finding a cask that’s almost empty, that shouldn’t be, and offering it to customers who then try it, find it utterly astonishing and feel like somehow they’ve played the system because it only cost £50?
I’d say that’s exactly why we’re here.
This is an anomaly. It’s a quirk, a novelty. Something that comes along unannounced and, as soon as it has said ”och aye the noo”, is gone again. A leaky cask, number 107. First fill ASB. Hand-fill. 10 years old - filled 2015. 30 litres remaining in a 200-litre cask, at 41.9% ABV. The lips are licked.
Score: 7/10
Very Good Indeed.
TL;DR
As un-Ardnamurchan as you can get. Delicious whisky
Nose
Apples stewed in a crusty pie. Sugary top. Tropical fruits. Cedar sawn. Toffee apple. Toasted bread. Cornflakes. Honey, real stuff. Bit of mint - mint chocolate maybe. Pecans. Wheat toast. Ooo, a saucy little salty swish. Overdone strudel, stroking burnt. Celery. A wee orange blossom. Milky Bar buttons.
Palate
Apple whack. Sharper green apples. Cedar here too. Cornflakes. Toasted nuts. Vanilla extract. A purple heathery, savoury Geery thing! Peanut butter. Spearmint. Touch of toasted oak. That mineralic slice is just in the back there, behind the doors. Heathery purpleness again, damn you. Dusty velour curtains.
The Dregs
Interesting! It feels to me like a liquid form of a summer’s day (what’s that?); stepping into a sun-kissed orchard, having a cooling apple pie thrust into your hand, and licking the top of a well done apple strudel. Golden, juicy, baked. It’s flowing with unctuous, flavourful Granny Smiths. Sweetness that doesn’t ever fall into problematic, crucially. A gentle sauciness that rivals Carl Craft’s salty eyebrows. A slight astringency that comes and goes. No smoke. No peat. No redness. Just pure, unadulterated bourbon matured apple fun. It’s similar to the Glasgow White Port, truth be told, in that apple-forward configuration. But it’s not Ardnamurchan, as I know it.
There’s no coastal grip, no metallic slice, no bonfires on the beach with marshmallows, or sandy rocks in your pocket. There’s no pebbles from the stream, or hot tarmac after the rain, or overt fireworks, or salt, or salinity at all, really. There’s nothing of the definitive Ardnamurchan character. Yes, deep down there’s the distillate that pokes through to remind you that this has been distilled through the Glenbeg Theatre of Dreams, but it’s so fleeting and delicate as to be a challenge to pinpoint it.
I find purple heather (Geery crossover hello!), toffee in abundance, cedary sweetness, sunshine toastiness, a massive wave of all the apples - sauced, strudeled, baked, dooked, filleted, arrowed - as well as some fleeting little bursts of interesting stuff - well-fired apple strudel being one, dusty brown velour curtains in my Gran’s old house. A purist might suggest that this is nothing but a fleeting strange-o. A quirky irrelevance. It’s exactly what I’m seeking from Ardnamurchan - little cask spins. I wonder if this is an indication of some character traits we might find in future casks of 15yo ASB matured Ardnamurchan? Perhaps not as condensed or as sweetly uncharacteristic, but of that quality?
It reminds me a wee bit of some cask samples I was lucky enough to try, two bourbon samples, and two sherry samples, of peated and unpeated expressions. The unpeated bourbon sample was a delicate orange floral beauty that I was desperate to try more of through bottling 300 of them. I still think about it now.
I find some of those characteristics here, albeit bolder and slightly sweeter. This is the purist’s configuration - unpeated bourbon matured whisky that’s been conveyor belted into my facehole ahead of time. 10yo whisky that feels very different to their other 10yo styles. Ardnamurchan Distillery is 12 years old, coming on 13. Soon we’ll be staring down the barrel at 15yo whisky, and, with quirky casks of Orange Wine, Tokaji, White Port, the Dornoch Blended-at-Birth experiment, and, maybe, some of those heavily peated teasers working their way out in the interim. I’m really rather excited by it all.
I’ve not mentioned ABV, which makes this all the more danger whisky - 41.9% drinks like swallowing a velvet-coated jellybean. It hits so softly and without heat that soon another glass is going down and the bottle is shockingly half-empty. Whisky juice. Concentrated, flavourful, non-tinkered with, cask strength, enthusiast-aligned whisky. This is a great little whisky. Not definitive Ardnamurchan, granted, but bottled fun.
Above all, another really interesting (and unique) angle on what is being produced from this beautiful distillery, at affordable, enthusiast aligned prices. Huzzah!
Score: 7/10
Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. DC
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