CK.372 & CK.339 | 59.2% & 59.4% ABV

ardnamurchan ck.372 bottle image doddie weir — Score: 10/10

Nirvana.*
***TL;DR***
*A celebration of Doddie Weir’s triumph over adversity*

The long-lasting impact of one person’s life.

Legacy is a big word so often used by marketing departments to bulk up the belief of having been around a long time. “Legacy Collection” or “Legacy Edition” feels like something we’d have to open the emergency section of our wallets to afford.

Tomatin, Glengoyne, Ardmore and even brand new distillery Torabhaig are using the term “legacy” to reinforce provenance and stature.

A dictionary search of the word reveals two definitions. The first is to do with money, of course, being the amount someone has bequeathed to those near and dear when embarking upon the last grand voyage into the unknown. “Granny left me a tenner in her legacy.” You’d not be far wrong either, given how our elderly are rinsed of all accumulated wealth, small or large, before being given any semblance of financial assistance from the state: death and taxes.

The other definition is the one I associate with the word: “the long-lasting impact of particular events, actions, that took place in the past, or of a person’s life.” You can see quite quickly how the word “legacy” when used in conjunction with places like Torabhaig doesn’t quite work. Legacy is something I think about often, not so much regarding how much I’ll leave to my family - the whisky excitement will put paid to that notion - but what people will think when my grisled visage flashes into their mind’s eye post-exit. I hope to make a long-lasting impact, even if only for the benefit of my family.

Motivation pours from legacy, driving people to succeed or face new frontiers with grit, because being remembered is a hugely important part of being human. I recall loosely an interview with Professor Brian Cox during the height of the Trump administration, when discussing the legacy of his term in office. He said something along the lines of “we are but temporary custodians of this place, charged with keeping it alive and not jeopardising it for the sake of self-interest, money, fame or power.” Those who strive to own the world, and for that matter everyone else will, in 100 years or so, be remembered only in name by those closest, and in legacy for all others - consigned to a footnote in the annals of human history as only having existed.

If nothing else I want to be remembered as a decent bloke. “Dougie was a decent bloke” they’ll say, and from the infinite bleak chasm of the afterlife I’ll smile, knowing that my legacy wasn’t being responsible for genocide or famine through my actions and that if they could, people would bring me back just to snuff me out again and again. I guess the biggest complication with legacy is that we do not entirely hold ownership of it - a lot is dependent on the reaction of others to the way we conduct ourselves. Day to day we’re just managing the delicate task of remaining alive, keeping the wolves from the door or batting away the constant flow of problems flung our way. We can try to plan out and enact such things as to set the course for what impact we will have, but legacy is something created as we go, etched in each of our narrative arcs by the waters of time.

Some of us are dealt blows of staggering consequence. Challenges that might feel insurmountable. We might not be able to change the circumstances and bearing, but we certainly can change the way we approach them. We can try and absorb the experience and form it into something else, something positive. Sometimes you open a door to someone else’s legacy and you are inevitably forced to reconcile your own path; what you are doing and how you are behaving. When such a door leads to Doddie Weir, it’s unsurprising that humility follows.

Review

Ardnamurchan AD/CK.372, Peated Spanish Oloroso, My Name’5 Doddie Foundation Bottling, 59.2% ABV
£100 paid. Sold out.

Doddie Weir was a rugby player. An athlete of a different generation, where pints in the pub were bashed together as often as faces were with fists on the pitch. Doddie carved his career playing club rugby for Melrose and Newcastle Falcons, winning championships with both, and internationally for the national Scotland Rugby Union team, winning 61 caps as an accomplished and celebrated lock. He represented the British and Irish Lions on their tour to South Africa in 1997.

We never know what’s waiting for us - one of life’s great joys, it could be said. For Doddie and his post-professional career, it was retiring to the borders to take up farming, after-dinner speaking and the odd commentary or pitch-side analysis for live matches. An avid enjoyer of the tartan suit, Doddie was always recognisable from a distance - 6ft 6in of tartan is hard to miss. 12 years after he retired from rugby he was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease.

MND is an as-yet incurable terminal disease that affects the muscles, in specific the mechanisms that send those muscles information on what to do. When the disease takes hold those messages fail to reach the muscles causing them to weaken, stiffen and ultimately waste, leading to debilitating impacts on mobility, eating and breathing. Other faculties like seeing and hearing are unaffected; as the disease progresses and the body gradually stops being able to articulate itself the person, the wit and charm, fun and humour, remain within. A torturously debilitating disease, MND kills one third of people within the year, and more than half within two years of diagnosis. There’s a 1 in 300 chance of MND affecting you, more so when you crest the golden age of 50.

Doddie announced he was diagnosed with MND in June 2017 and in the years after dedicated his time to campaigning for MND, bringing crucial hope to the otherwise dreadfully under-supported sufferers, raising money for research and participating in exploratory drug trials to find ways of combating this wretched affliction. By November 2022 the My Name’5 Doddie Foundation had given more than £8 million for MND research, yet I also know that until recently I didn't understand what MND was or what it meant. To my eternal shame, it wasn’t really until whisky became involved that I took the time to understand it.

A few days ago I sat down to watch Doddie Weir: One More Try on BBC iPlayer - a documentary filmed in the first year or so after he announced his condition, and was overwhelmed by what a truly exceptional man Doddie Weir was. I’ve known of Doddie for ages, like most Scots probably have, in my peripheral engagement with international rugby each year - the Six Nations championship or world cups often featured images of Doddie in his tartan plumage, but I’d never made the effort to engage with his story. Sitting now, six months since he succumbed to MND I can’t help but feel very sad, guilty too that it has taken until now for me to understand what it was that Doddie was going through. He met MND with incredible fortitude and astounding stoicism, with genuine rugby humour and levity that flew in the face of the unyielding dismantling of his freedoms. It’s safe to say I am truly humbled by Doddie Weir’s legacy. Whisky was my door to Doddie’s legacy, and that whisky was a bottle released in April 2023 by the Ardnamurchan distillery.

I reached out to sales director Connal MacKenzie to ask how it came to be that Doddie Weir would visit Ardnamurchan distillery, and his retelling of the story enriches the entire experience. The My Name’5 Doddie charity ambassador and co-founder of Doddie Aid, Rob Wainwright (former Scotland captain and Lions flanker) had spoken with distillery manager Alex Bruce, childhood friends, to ask if they could pass by on the return leg of their whirlwind tour of the Isle of Coll in October 2022. Alex, Connal and the team were delighted to welcome them, and were supposed to be on-site to escort them around the place, but a clash with the London Whisky Show took them off-site on the day of the visit - the third time it had been rescheduled on account of weather. Connal gave Doddie and his team one simple instruction: pick whatever cask you want, with the exception of cask number one, and Ardnamurchan distillery will bottle it to raise funds for the charity.

DJ, Brand Home Manager for Adelphi, hosted Doddie on the day, and having spent a bit of time with DJ now I can only imagine how much fun it must have been to wander around warehouse one, sampling from anything they fancied knowing that it would be decanted into bottles and captured in time. The fact that the My Name’5 Doddie team were given this incredible access to maturing stock goes some way to showing where priorities lie for Ardnamurchan and Adelphi: it’s not about the whisky, it’s about the person and their experience.

*photo courtesy of Ardnamurchan Distillery*

Doddie picked a five year old whisky, preferring it over everything else they tried, including the oldest whisky maturing in the warehouse - around eight years old at that point. In the time it took for Ardnamurchan to get cask 372 out of the warehouse and down to the bottling plant in Fife, Doddie had died. At one point Connal thought it inappropriate to release a whisky that the man who picked it wouldn’t get to try but he was quickly dissuaded of that notion by Rob, who thought it unbelievably important to celebrate Doddie and his experience at the distillery.

Bottled it was, and remained embargoed until very close to the point at which the bottles went on sale - 327 in total - through a webshop link provided by Royal Mile Whiskies. It was abrupt and unexpected for all those who follow Ardnamurchan; I’m fortunate to have people who know of my love for Ardnamurchan whisky enough to reach out and alert me to the imminent launch. Such is the fervent grab for these rarified charity bottles, and the resulting auction speculation that usually follows, that elaborate mechanisms are put in place to afford some semblance of “fairness” to the drinkers, which in the context of people suffering from MND and Doddie’s legacy, seems woefully pathetic.

I was successful in securing a bottle and 15 minutes later all 327 were sold - a fantastic testament to the charitable sentiments of this release with the bottle selling for an increased £100 ticket, a price I was more than happy to pay knowing that it would go to the My Name’5 Doddie Foundation. It’s also another take on 100% peated Ardnamurchan spirit, something I’d very recently spent time with through the five year old distillery hand-fill octave cask. The whisky inside this bottle is also five years old but matured in a larger Spanish oloroso hogshead for the entire duration of maturation.

Presentation is typical for Ardnamurchan single casks, delivered in their matte blue painted bottles and copper detailing, but unique for this bottling is the label. Eschewing the standard copper and black printing, for Doddie’s cask we see blue and copper foiling, a nod to Doddie’s tartan which features black and yellow, blue and white. Doddie’s tartan also appears in a swatch beside the text, a fantastic flourish so uniquely identifiable for the My Name’5 Doddie Foundation.

Score: 9/10

**Exceptional.**
***TL;DR***
*Everything it should be*

Nose

Bright red with darker streaks. New tyres. Pencil. Mint humbugs. Maple bacon. Malty salty. Salted pretzel. Almond croissant. Cinnamon dusting. Cinnamon swirl with icing ahoy. Salted marshmallows. Big sweaty sauna. A fresh hit of kiwi fruit.

Palate

Big smokey juicebox. Cranberries. Jammy toast. Coastal chimney. Peppery. Salinity mixed with rushing sweet malty somethings… synth strawberries? Woody, charred. A fantastic savoury earthiness. Marshmallows over a fire, draped in caramel and dusted with cinnamon. Finish is long and meandering around lip smacking sweet smoke.

The Dregs

This is a bit of a sneaky move here, but given the gravity of the situation I wanted to make sure that my assessment of Doddie’s whisky held credence. So alongside this bottle of peated oloroso I also opened and poured in comparison the Ardnamurchan AD/11:14 CK.339 UK exclusive bottling. Given the similarity in specs - the CK.339 is also Spanish oloroso, albeit unpeated spirit - it seemed like a perfect match to gauge how peated Ardnamurchan fairs in similar oak. The CK.339 is a year older in maturation, but was also in a larger butt generating 656 bottles - smaller casks typically speed up maturation effects on spirits, so it’s a fair comparison I think.

I’ve also used recent experiences to give some perspective into what this whisky means in the general scope of whisky right now - Tomatin Cask Strength, Ben Nevis Manzanilla, Glentauchers, Ardbeg and Tullibardine whiskies have all been sampled alongside these two bottlings.

The CK.339 UK Exclusive is similar to the Nickolls and Perks bottling - one year more maturation for the UK Exclusive brings more red fruitiness and cask character into the fray. The orange flavours found in the N&P are not overtly present here; more jam and red fruits without compromising that coastal character of Ardnamurchan spirit. I’m able to find superb flavours in here - Jammie Dodgers - that make my heart sing. Being a young whisky you’d expect the new-make to be quite prominent but only when watered down significantly does it appear, otherwise there’s nothing really to expose the youth other than an overt vividness to the whisky. At one point a really prominent dark damp wood note pops up, reminding me of the Glen Scotia 25 year old wood monster. Quite remarkable to find it amongst the neon glow.

The CK.372 Doddie Weir Cask is a different whisky to the CK.339 but shares many fundamental similarities. The difference, of course, is in the peated barley. It’s like the CK.339 but with added extras including the revered sweet smoke character. I’m no peat monster but the appreciation of what the peated element brings to this style of Ardnamurchan spirit cannot be denied.

Depth of flavour - an earthiness, a grounding. A wisping lightness as the smoke clears to reveal those sweeter, fruitier notes. At full power it’s bold, balanced and brutal, all at once. Water reduces everything, but I don’t want reduction, I want resurgence. Powerful. Majestic. Throughout the smoke comes and goes in waves, revealing the underlying character in fleeting squalls; the empty glass is as enjoyable as the dram itself. It’s a magnificent experience, and the tumbling level seen through the sight-glass on the bottle shows just how much I’ve been enjoying it.

At the end of the BBC documentary, Doddie speaks briefly of goals - getting to his 50th birthday would be a great achievement and it’s the first time we, the viewer, witness Doddie’s barbican wall crumble: he cries at the prospect of being 50. Being diagnosed with a terminal disease that typically kills people within two years, and being 47 at time of diagnosis, Doddie had done the sums. He put up a monumental fight, doing whatever he could to help others with MND get the support they needed, to find some semblance of progress in battling the disease so that others could benefit. A lot of Doddie’s focus was in helping others get the support they needed; he had an accessible washroom made and grafted on to his house so that, when Doddie “didn’t need it anymore”, could be craned onto a lorry and re-homed easily for someone else. That is the very definition of legacy.

Doddie celebrated his 52nd birthday. In the years since diagnosis he was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services to rugby, MND research and his local community in the borders. A new challenge cup was formed for matches between Scotland and Wales - the Doddie Weir Cup has been raised six times now - and countless other awards of recognition for his important work in bringing to light MND and its impact. Whisky is perhaps not in the same league as an OBE, but it is a pastime borne of community, of a shared love of life, of protecting and caring for each other. Whisky is the perfect vessel to channel the sentiment of Doddie’s foundation, to expand the reach of knowledge and support, through people willing to spend a bit of money on whisky. We open and share whisky in pure acts of friendship, of saying to another person that we love them and enjoy their company enough to put aside potential financial gain in place of bona fide emotional and spiritual gain.

To see whisky promoting these simple things through association with someone like Doddie, who spent the most challenging part of his life dedicated to connecting people, to helping others and making sure that his lasting legacy is a foundation that continues to rage against MND is, in the modern whisky landscape of opportunistic leveraging and vapid marketing constructs, a rarity. The resulting sentiment is that of whisky nirvana - the way it should be. This is the pinnacle, it’s what we’re all pursuing in whisky - the perfect dram. *A rare thing indeed. In order for this to be awarded, a tear was shed.

A few tears were shed in the enjoyment of this whisky and the education that its existence has prompted, and I hope that all those reading to this point will spend a minute or two more on the following links. Doddie Weir was and always will be a legend. Long may his legacy continue to help those in need:

https://www.myname5doddie.co.uk/

https://www.myname5doddie.co.uk/how-to-donate/

Score: 9/10 DC

Bonus Review

Ardnamurchan AD/CK.339, Unpeated Oloroso, UK Exclusive Single Cask Bottling, 59.4% ABV
£90 paid. Sold out.

Score: 8/10

**Something special.**
***TL;DR***
*Another brilliant example of Ardnamurchan's potent alchemy*

Nose

Bright red. Strawberry laces. Freshly chopped, minty cedar wood. Malty, savoury cinnamon bun. Bit of liquorice kicking about - All-Sorts. Damp sock. Dark red. After a bit of time and delicate nosing - old wood. Wee bit of citrus in there (April Fool?) Well-toasted sourdough. It feels like there’s a bit of brewery on the nose - beefy. Bit of purple with a big sniff - parma violets, heather honey. Struck match.

Water - oak ramps up at first then dies down, much the same as the other notes do as well.

Palate

Bright red and white candy canes. Woody and sweet, powerful and spicy. Earthy - dirt and creosote on the summer wind. Big, crisp, bold flavours - juicy reds, Jammie Dodgers.

Water - tamps down the brightness. There’s a sense of the new-make in there which isn’t visible at full chat. I think I put too much in. Reset. Aye, this is far more enjoyable at cask strength, or as near as dammit. Sweet, sour, salty, malty.

Score: 8/10 DC

From the editor: The Dramface team hopes you can join them in making a donation to Doddie’s legacy foundation My Name’5 Doddie. You can find out more about the charity here.

Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. DC

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