Ardnamurchan AD / Rum Cask Release 2023

 

Ardnamurchan AD / Rum Cask Release 2023	Data Sheet
Owner:	Adelphi Selection
Barcode:	5060383653311
Price:	£72 in the UK
Available in Israel	No
Alcohol:	55% abv
Age	NAS
Cask Types:	A combination of peated and unpeated spirit matured in Ex-Bourbon barrels and then re-racked into Ex-Caribbean Rum barrels. *
Batch Bottle No.	486 / 8334
Bottling Date:	9/09/2023
Chill-Filtered:	No
Natural Colour:	Yes
Kashrus Issues:	None
Kosher Certification:	No

* See the Official Cask Datasheet below for further details.

Introduction

Ardnamurchan distillery is probably the most talked about, coolest, most respected, admired and revered distillery in Scotland at the moment and no doubt the world. Its reputation now rivals the legendary Springbank distillery but it’s Ardnamurchan which seems to be taking all the limelight lately.

As far as all my non-Jewish whisky friends around the world are concerned, Ardnamurchan ticks every single enthusiast’s checkbox printed on the page and even some others drawn by hand. When YouTube channels review an Ardnamurchan, it’s accompanied by angelic music and the review is conducted in hush tones in reverence to this majestic spirit. In short, everyone you ask will tell you that Ardnamurchan is doing everything right.

In my opinion, they absolutely deserve the hype but I have not, up until now, shared their enthusiasm. Indeed, the eagle eyed of you who regularly read my kosher whisky blog will have noticed that I haven’t exactly been talking about Ardnamurchan that often, if at all.

Don’t get me wrong, I was extremely impressed with the distillery when, back in October 2021, I was very graciously invited for a private visit at the distillery which included an extensive tour of their warehouses, lasting over 3 hours and hosted by David John Cameron, their Ardnamurchan UK Brand Ambassador.

David John Cameron , Ardnamurchan warehouse No.1

I loved every minute of my visit, yet ironically, came away with no whisky, except for the very generous cask samples I had been given by David John, which he'd drawn straight from their finest Bourbon and Rum barrels.

I did however purchase a set of two, beautifully shaped flute style glasses from German glass manufactures, SPIEGELAU, which they Germanically call "Special Glasses Whisky Snifter Premium".

https://www.spiegelau.com/en-nl/shop/special-glasses-spirit/whisky-snifter-premium-4460167

Those Covid era masks. Did they actually do anything?

Why didn’t I buy any actual bottles of Ardnamurchan there? Moreover, as enjoyable as it was, I have never up until now, bought anything of theirs to review and never even written about my visit to Ardnamurchan before. So, what’s my problem with them?

Ardnamurchan Distillery

The built from scratch, customed designed distillery buildings and on-sight warehouses are found in a clearing off of the B8007, a remote and incredibly atmospheric forest road on the ragged edge of the far west of Scotland. Indeed, the Ardnamurchan peninsula in which the distillery sits (hence its name), is the most westerly part of the Scottish mainland.

"Through restless foliage and tall trees he leads

To a house, in a clearing, a place in her fear she calls home".

“The Lady Lies” from the album “…and then there were three”, Genesis 1978.

AI generated from the above lyrics

The B8007, an almost 20 mile-long narrow undulating and winding single lane coastal forest road is the only way to get to the distillery. 

The B8007's dramatic scenery switches rapidly from quaint sunny coastal road to tall dark canopies of foliage with menacing coastal drops on one side and sharp jagged walls of rock formations on the other.

The nature of the road only seems to heighten the excitement, expectation and anticipation of the visitor.

Like us, you might even be (un)lucky enough to witness an open miracle which must surely occur on this road, on a regular basis. That is, huge lorries delivering either to or from the distillery, seem to be able to negotiate along this path, seemingly barely able to  take anything wider than an SUV. As luck would have it, as this red juggernaut was coming towards us, there happened to be a small passing place where I could move into. However, what would have happened had I met the lorry only a minute before or after? A solid wall of rock on one side and a road barrier on the other? Such is the mystery of the B8007.

By the way, you won’t find the distillery in “Google Street View” because as of the date of writing this, the street view of the B8007 was last updated in 2011 and Ardnamurchan was only founded in 2019.

The distillery is independently owned by “Adelphi Select”, a group of passionate Scotsmen who started off as a premium level independent bottler before deciding that the time had come to build their own distillery.

The distillery is extremely environmentally aware, pioneering many fuel-saving techniques and they are constantly looking for ways to reduce Ardnamurchan's “carbon footprint”.

The owners and distillery workers, more than any other distillery I know of, are more than willing to engage with their online fans and are happy to do interviews. They also arrange frequent whisky and other cultural events where they invite you to come and visit them.

They pride themselves that the casks they purchase from the USA, Spain and other parts of Europe, are of the highest quality in the industry. They really know what they are doing and are maturing some of the finest whisky in Scotland, all bottled at high abv if not cask strength, all non-chill-filtered and natural colour.

What’s more, they go out of their way to give us as much technical information as they possibly can. This includes a QR-Code which takes you to a website where they give you data on your specific bottle. (More on this later).

So, what is my problem with them? Well, it’s their cask choices they use to bottle almost all their releases.

Their bottling policy is almost always to release their whisky either as exclusively Ex-Sherry or wine cask matured or as a vatting of approximately 65% Ex-Bourbon barrels and 35% Ex-Sherry casks, making almost every release unsuitable for the strictly kosher consumer.

It would seem that someone at Ardnamurchan doesn’t like Single Malt Whisky exclusively matured in Ex-Bourbon barrels.

When I was there, I asked David John about this vatting policy more than once but every time I brought up the subject, he seemed to obfuscate and change the subject.

I would love to share in the love-fest for Ardnamurchan but it kind of puts a damper on things when you cannot actually buy, drink and review any of their whisky.

I’m hoping that there will be a 100% Ex-Bourbon Barrel release soon or at least another of these Rum Cask Finish releases.

The Ardnamurchan AD / Rum Cask Release

“Finished in Rum Barrels from The Caribbean”

According to the official website, Ardnamurchan intend to keep releasing this Rum Cask in batches from time to time. However, I am only aware so far of their 2023 release.

Packaging

The Adelphi Single Malt Whisky packaging has always been ultra-minimalist and understated with no box and a tiny label near the bottom of the bottle. In my opinion, this was done in order to transmit the message of - “We are all about quality of flavour and nothing else!”.

However, these Ardnamurchan releases, although still coming without a box, do have a more regular (practical) sized label.

The Adelphi Dancing Scotsman and other Label Symbols

On many of Adelphi’s labels you’ll see what looks like a Dancing Scotsman. You’ll also see this on the gates of the distillery as you come in.

The “Dancing Scotsman” or more correctly called “The Adelphi 'Dancey Man'”, comes from a mid-19th century cartoon, depicting Sir William Gladstone, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, performing an energetic “Pas de Bas” over an ear of barley.

The cartoon celebrates the passing of a new law through Parliament that revenue could only be raised on the amount of whisky left in each cask after maturation, and not the level that it was originally filled to. With the penalties for long term maturation lifted, this enabled Scotch Whisky to be kept in the cask maturing until it was ready to consume.

Dafke, this symbol is missing from this Ardnamurchan Rum Cask Release but there is another strange symbol on the right side of the label with some letters and numbers either side of it.

Despite some Googling, I couldn’t actually find any information on this symbol and was not able to work out what the letters and numbers printed on the side signified until I realised that it does kind of look like the Ardnamurchan lighthouse some 16 miles from the distillery down an unnamed tiny narrow scenic road path at the farthest western end of the Scottish map.

https://www.westcoastofscotland.co.uk/ardnamurchan-lighthouse

Then, looking at those characters again I had a notion that perhaps the “.N” and the “.W” at the ends might stand for North and West.

So, I did a Google for “Ardnamurchan lighthouse coordinates”.

Sure enough, Google AI Overview gave me this:

“The coordinates for Ardnamurchan Lighthouse are approximately 56.7271°N 6.2260°W. This location is at Ardnamurchan Point, which is the westernmost point of the UK mainland. The lighthouse is situated at the end of a minor road, 5 miles west of Kilchoan”.

So, mystery solved.

Visiting Ardnamurchan Lighthouse

My dear wife expressed a wish that after our visit to the distillery, that we take a drive to the lighthouse, just to say that we’d reached the end of the map, so to speak. So, after saying goodbye to the kind folks at the distillery, we got back in the car and headed off down the road (in the opposite direction to Fort William).

The End of the map

I can tell you; the journey from the distillery to the lighthouse was a lot harder than I’d anticipated. It may be “just” 20 miles on the map but it took over an hour to get there, over what was in some places, some pretty rough terrain. (I’m glad we were in a rented Toyota Rav4). For some reason, Google Maps says that the journey takes 41 minutes. Don't believe them, unless you want to break an axel or completely disregard the Highlands' single-track road safety and courtesy policy which almost everyone there follows.

Then, after our visit to the lighthouse, of course we had the daunting task of having to drive all the way back again to our rental chalet in Fort William.

This turned out to be a gruelling 3½ hour (but admittedly, it should usually take around 2½ hours), 73-mile long drive along the unnamed driving path from the Lighthouse until we reached the "infamous" B8007 again. At Salen the road finally merges onto the A861. I could have sworn that the B8007 had grown another 10 miles since we had first used it to come here in the morning.

For some reason, the ferry crossing at Corran wasn’t running that day. This meant that we had no other choice but to head north on the A861 which leads to the A830 mountain road as it undulates and zig-zags around hills and lochs.

We drove on for what seemed like an eternity. It was dark by this time and the weather had taken a turn for the worse. We travailed the rest of the journey in stormy conditions, the rain coming down like sheets of metal.  After hugging the coastline along Loch Ailort and then Loch Eilt, Baruch Hashem, we finally got to Glenfinnan along the A830 and comparative civilisation. We were happy and relieved to see the lights of Fort William and pull into the driveway of our rental accommodation.

The QR- Code

Getting back to the label, I’m always curious to try out the QR-Codes and see where it leads me. Upon scanning many bottle label QR-Codes you are left disappointed as it simply sends you to the distillery’s website. Sometimes, not even the webpage that directly references your bottle. However, this one was different. Scanning the black and white square brought up a page which led to a PDF file containing a Datasheet listing all the casks that went into this specific bottle I had in my hand. How cool is that?

Data Sheet listing every Cask No. that went into this bottling.

Absolutely amazing information. As far as I know, the only other distillery that does something similar is Bruichladdich.

 

Tasting Notes

Appearance

A dull Chardonnay mustard-y yellow colour. Viscosity is excellent as would be expected with this high quality non-chill filtered 55% abv Single Malt. Swirling the liquid round in my Ardnamurchan Brandy glass produced some lovely streaks of alcohol, indicating that the malted barley oil has remained in tacked even after the double distillation process.

First impressions...

On the Nose

A very pleasant hint of light Peat.

An old dry barn.

A definite Umami (savouriness) character to it.

A packet of Salted Potato Crisps.

A hint of sweet aromatic perfume.

Fresh Orange juice and “Nana” green mint.

Waxy Furniture Polish.

Musky Warehouse.

Not what I would expect from a Rum barrel at all.

There are no sugarcane syrup / molasses aromas, no burnt sugar or caramel and no sulphur burnt matchstick notes, all usually associated with other Single Malts matured in Ex-Rum Barrels.

Tasting

Surprisingly, a lot sweeter on the tongue.

A slight tanginess about this.

Milky malty barley breakfast cereal.

Orange fruits. Glazed Orange peels

Orange Marmalade.

Without Water

At 55% abv, I'd usually add water. Indeed, the above tasting notes are for 1-2 teaspoons of added water. However, just for fun, I decided to try this Ardnamurchan without water and it's surprisingly drinkable. Yes, it's a bit hot but it has a lovely rich taste of "fruit chews" soft chewy sweets (you know, the type that people throw in shuls for a simcha that for some reason, Israelis erroneously call "Sukariot Toffee" - Toffee sweets), a slight musky wet hay and wooden beams, with a touch of savoury honey.

Finish

Bittersweet Orange and lemon Chocolate Mints in liquid form with a fruity dryness at the very end.

Conclusions

A lot of reviewers including huge Ardnamurchan fans who wax lyrical about all the other AD releases have dafka been particularly lukewarm about this release, some even going as far as to say that they didn’t like it.

However, I loved it, and I don’t think it’s only because it’s the only kosher release that I am aware of, that they’ve brought out so far on a semi-regular basis. Despite its young age, it shows enormous complexity and character. It’s what I’d describe as an old-fashioned "dirty" Victorian style whisky that reminds me somewhat of the classically maverick Craigellachie 13 (which I used to drink for many years until, contrary to information on the “Web” which stated that it was solely matured in American Oak, after receiving an email from Bacardi, it turns out that, just like the 17-Year-Old, it’s a vatting of Ex-Bourbon and Ex-Sherry casks, all made from American Oak of course).

One thing's for sure. No one would ever describe this bottle as "smooth".

The Ardnamurchan Rum Cask is one of those Single Malts (I’m thinking perhaps like Glencadam 10), where you can actually taste the distillate process. This is even more impressive when you consider that so many Single Malts fully matured (or finished) in Rum Casks, manage to completely obliterate the more subtle notes of the malted barley spirit with their typical heavy sweet sulphury flavours of burnt sugar beet juice molasses.

https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/sugar-cane-and-black-cane-sugar-molasses-gm1493917793-517441395

AI Generated Rum Barrels and Rum in a Pirate's cave

Yes, it has some rough edges (just like the B8007), but for me, that simply endears me to it even more. Every whisky enthusiast should strive to get hold of a bottle of Ardnamurchan and I’m glad to say that at last, there is a strictly kosher option available now.

However, my recommendation comes with a warning. This Single Malt is NOT for the beginner, or someone who only enjoys his or her light fruity "well rounded" Speysiders. If you are one of those guys, then I’m telling you; you won’t like this!