Ardnamurchan: Cask Strength Release 2023 (Scottish Single Malt Highland Whisky: 58.1% ABV)
Visual: A light, clear yellow gold. A mix of slow and fast medium thickness streaks come from the spirit.
Nose: Dried beef. Slight dry custard. Light smoke. Fresh dough. Cake sponge. Sour dough. Water adds apples.
Body: Honey. Lots of meaty peat. Smoke. Lightly medicinal. Light apple. Water adds raisins. Makes oily. Apples and pears come out. Apple pie and sugar dusting. Nut oils.
Finish: Smooth medicinal style. Some vanilla. Oily smoke. Methanol candles air. Water adds apple pie and sugar. Praline.
Conclusion: Ohhh, this is nice and has such a great nose. Neat it is pretty intense with dried beef and smoke, slightly medicinal which surprised me, a smoother take on the harsher whisky notes. It is slightly closed due to the strength but still very nice.
Water then changes that massively. Still a good bit of peat, but sweeter and smoother. There is absolutely lovely apple pie sweeteness, yet with raisins dashed through it, a mix of lighter and darker fruit around the smoother peat character.
There is now such a range of flavour, still with a touch of those medicinal notes and still notable smoked meat, but now so much more open, sweeter and chewier with that. It has the sweet, it has the rich, it has the peat, and even that medicinal touch, it feels like it is ticking all the boxes of what I want from a whisky.
A freaking massive with with a massive range. Another banger from the ever improving Ardnamurchan distillery.
Background: Ardnamurchan has really been earning my respect over the past few years – from their early interesting batches they have been getting steadily better and better with nearly every release. Pity they use blockchain stuff, which always seems like a solution looking for a problem that has not already been sufficiently fixed by much more environmentally friendly methods. Ah well. Anyway. Fourth drink in the recent independent spirit Burns night tasting. I was surprised to find out this uses 87% Peated malt, I was expecting the cask strength alone to give it weight, but to find a peated dram as well gave a bit of extra excitement to this one. By this point I had tried a few drams, but still tried my best to turn out semi decent notes.