Ardmore (Àird Mhòr) 8yo
Single Malts of Scotland | 55.3% ABV
Score: 7/10
Very Good Indeed.
TL;DR
Light, smoky, zesty & fresh, perfect for storms or sunshine
What do you take on holiday?
As I write this it’s 2pm and I’m sitting in the garden of my parents’ house in Cornwall, basking in sunshine.
It’s an 18th Century fisherman’s cottage, about a ten minute walk from the rugged north Cornish coast. The house itself – a rambling, ramshackle building that’s crafted from lichen flecked slate and undulating wooden beams – is built into a hill, so that the top part of the garden affords you a view over the hamlet that it’s nestled in.
From where I’m sitting, I can see the silvery grey slate roofs of the neighbouring cottages, and beyond them, fields. Beyond the fields is the vast, open expanse of the Atlantic Ocean.
It’s April, and the world around me is alive with birdsong; the shouts of children from the neighbouring houses; the hum of a tractor in the far distance. The air is sweet with the tang of the cow manure that’s recently been strewn across the fields. It is, to all intents and purposes, one of those all too rare, perfect English spring days. A stark contrast from what we were expecting when we woke up this morning.
Because last night was horrendous. When we arrived here, at around 10:30pm, the rain was torrential. What made it all the worse was the wind – a frenzied wind that was blowing in off the sea and whipping the rain horizontal. There are no streetlights here, so it was literally pitch black. As we struggled up the garden path, shouldering our luggage, I felt the sickening crunch of snails, exploding like eyeballs under my feet. By the time I got into the house, I was soaked to the skin.
One of the things that I enjoy most about holidaying in Cornwall, is choosing which bottles of whisky to bring down with me. I wrote about this in a previous review, so I won’t labour the point, but I always seem to enjoy whisky more when I’m down here. We don’t have a TV here, or even broadband, so the evenings are spent reading, playing the guitar and enjoying a glass of whisky in front of the log burner.
We all know that whisky is all about time – the time it takes to mature it, the time it takes for it to reveal itself in the glass and of course the good times that it affords us. One thing that we have a lot of when we’re down here is time. Hence, whisky always seems to taste better. It’s that combination of the right environment, the right whisky, the right company and the right headspace.
This time, I have three bottles with me: a single cask Benrinnes from Càrn Mòr, an 8yo Ardmore from Single Malts of Scotland (today’s foray) and a rum from Diamond Distillery, bottled by That Boutiquey Whisky/Rum Company. I’m not a huge rum geek, but after reading and digesting Ainsley’s excellent Malternatives 101: Rum piece I’ve found myself becoming increasingly rum curious, and in the last couple of months, I’ve picked up a handful of bottles. I’ll be honest, bringing the rum down here felt like a bit of a wildcard. In truth, though, it has turned out to be the Ardmore.
After all, spring is well underway, and the heavily peated and heavily sherried expressions in my collection have already started giving ground to the lighter, zestier, bourbon matured stuff. Although dark rum can be heavy, decadent and warming, it also suits the longer evenings and warmer pre-summer days that we’ve been enjoying here in the UK. Heavily peated whisky, on the other hand, is a lot more elemental. It suits those dark, cold, autumn and winter evenings, when you find yourself lighting the fire, thankful for the indoors.
Needless to say, then, arriving here to gale force winds and torrential rain yesterday, the Ardmore suddenly made perfect sense. It felt like exactly the sort of whisky to pour after a four hour car journey.
After changing into some dry clothes and lighting the wood burner, I cracked it open.
Review
Ardmore (Àird Mhòr) 8yo, Single Malts of Scotland, Elixir Distillers, 2009 distillation, 2018 bottling, ex-Laphroaig barrels, 55.3% ABV
£50 paid in 2018
When it comes to official bottlings of Ardmore, there isn’t an awful lot to choose from. There’s the Legacy, a price point whisky which, at 40% ABV, is perfectly drinkable but not exactly aimed at the enthusiast crowd; there’s the Tradition, a travel retail exclusive; there’s the Port Wood Finish; and finally, there’s the Triple Wood, another retail exclusive. Although the latter three are bottled at 46%, nothing in the official stable carries an age statement.
Having been built in 1898 by William Teacher and Sons, the majority of the distillery’s output is still used as a constituent part of the famous Teacher’s Blended Scotch Whisky. Nowadays, the distillery is owned by Beam Suntory, and although the majority of its output still goes into Teachers, there are plenty of single cask expressions that make it into the wild. As is often the case, these are brought to us courtesy of the indy bottlers. It’s not unusual to see Ardlair, the unpeated Ardmore expression, in indy guise too.
The expression that I’m reviewing here is regular peated Ardmore, although it’s not labelled as such. Bottled by Single Malts of Scotland, under the none too cryptic moniker Àird Mhòr, I picked this one up back in 2018 from the Whisky Exchange in Covent Garden for around £50. I tend to drink a lot less peated whisky nowadays than I used to, and for this reason, it’s taken me until now to get around to opening it. The reason that I bought it was because, having only ever tried the official Legacy, I figured that an indy Ardmore with a healthy ABV would be worth having in the collection. I also liked the quirky nature of it. Not only is it bottled under a weird name, but it was also matured in ex-Laphroaig barrels which I thought - at the time - was quite interesting. Since buying it, I’ve also seen a handful of other Ardmore expressions that have been matured in ex-Laphroaig casks. It makes sense, since they’re under the same ownership, so this isn’t the anomaly that I at first thought it was.
Distilled in December of 2009 and bottled in June 2018, this particular expression carries an 8 year age statement and comes in at 55.3% ABV. Unfortunately, it’s likely going to be difficult to track down, but rest assured, finding cask strength Ardmore from the indy bottlers isn’t too difficult, so if you like the sound of this one, then you’ll likely be able to find something similar.
Generally, indy Ardmore seems to be reasonably priced, such is the ubiquity of it. And let’s face it, taking a punt on young, heavily peated Scotch that’s been matured in ex-bourbon barrels rarely leads to disappointment. If this particular expression is something that sounds interesting, then I’d be fairly confident that you’ll find something equal to it, without breaking the bank.
Score: 7/10
Very Good Indeed.
TL;DR
Light, smoky, zesty & fresh, perfect for storms or sunshine
Nose
On the nose I get new leather, seaweed and a general coastal, rockpool sort of smell. There’s also a hint of milk chocolate, although it’s very subtle. The smoke is reminiscent of fresh green branches, complete with leaves, smouldering on a campfire (something that I often get with younger peated expressions), although it’s not overly dominant. After some time in the glass, I also get a touch of farmyard – think silage, or perhaps even cow manure – although again, it’s fairly subtle.
Palate
The first thing that strikes me on the palate is that this is quite a light whisky. I get icing sugar, some freshly squeezed lemon juice, a little of the milk chocolate that I picked up on the nose, some liquorice root and a touch of aniseed. The smoke, again, is green twiggy branches on a campfire. Or maybe a garden fire. Either way, it’s fresh and green, but not so prominent that it overpowers some of the more subtle notes.
There’s also a nutty note here, which is something that I often pick up on young Laphroaigs. Whether or not that’s coming from the ex-Laphroaig barrel, or whether it’s coming from the distillate, I don’t know. It could, of course, be psychological, as I know that this was matured in ex-Laphroaig casks.
That said, other than the very subtle nutty note, there’s not much else here in the way of similarities to Laphroaig. If anything, this expression reminds me more of a young Caol Ila. It’s lemony and zesty and fresh. Definitely more interesting than the well-priced but fairly anodyne Legacy that I tried several years ago, although that doesn’t particularly surprise me, muzzled as it was at 40% ABV.
The Dregs
There’s no question that peated whisky is - and likely always will be - my first love. A passing interest, sparked by a visit to the Glenfiddich distillery back in 2007, would probably have remained just that, had it not been for a bottle of Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference Islay. That Sainsbury’s Islay – probably the tenth or twelfth bottle that I bought – was nothing short of a gamechanger.
I can still remember the initial smell of Germoline, seaweed and iodine that wafted up from the bottom of my tumbler – I hadn’t yet graduated to a Glencairn glass – as I poured that first dram. They were flavours that I’d never encountered in any food or drink before. And yet, I instinctively understood them. Before that first sip had even touched my lips, I knew exactly what I was about to taste, despite the fact that it was utterly new to me. It just made perfect sense.
When you initially start to engage with something – whether it’s music, fashion, art, whisky or whatever – it’s often the loudest, shoutiest thing that first piques your interest. Back when I was a teenager, when I first started getting serious about music, my record collection consisted of albums by bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Led Zeppelin, Pantera, and the Sex Pistols. On paper, this sounds fairly disparate, but all of these artists have one thing in common – they’re all loud and – relatively speaking – heavy.
Back then, music needed to be ballsy and rough around the edges to really engage me. Anything too reflective, or radio-friendly didn’t appeal to me. In fact, I dismissed a lot of music back then – music which I’ve since come to appreciate – as middle of the road and banal.
The same is true of my initial forays into whisky. For the first couple of years, I gobbled up everything that was put in front of me like a Hungry Hippo snapping at marbles, but it was the heavily peated, elemental stuff that really spoke to me.
It wasn’t long before I began to chance my arm with the indy bottlers, and before long, I had a fairly respectable and rapidly growing collection of bottles. The common thread that ran through my collection back then was that none of it was quiet. Whisky had to be shouty, and intense to really grab me. I’m ashamed to say it, but I remember being given a bottle of Aberlour 10yo, back in the late noughties, opening it, tasting it and using the rest to drink in coffee over the festive period. I literally took one sip, realised that it wasn’t peated and dismissed it out of hand, such was the blinkered nature of my pursuit of peat.
Nowadays, I’m a lot more open minded, and whilst there’s still plenty of whisky out there that isn’t to my taste, I’ve learnt to accept that most whisky – even the price-point supermarket stuff that’s been watered down to 40% - has a time and place.
Quieter whisky is something that I particularly enjoy nowadays, and more often than not, I find myself reaching for something non-peated, non-sherried, and matured in ex-bourbon. I think, generally speaking, we mellow as we get older, and as with my record collection, my whisky collection reflects that. Although you can still see the outlines of the various rabbit holes that I’ve been down over the years, these days there’s no single, defining feature to the whisky that I buy.
This Ardmore is the sort of whisky that I tend to reach for only on occasion nowadays, but last night, as I sat listening to the rain outside, the wind rattling the telegraph wire as the flames from the fire cast ragged shadows against the rough slate walls of the cottage, it felt like the perfect accompaniment to the end of a long day.
Certainly, for the £50 that I paid for it, it’s solid. Light, zesty, fresh and yet still packing enough of a peaty punch to be powerful, this is good, honest whisky that could easily go toe-to-toe with some of the Islay big hitters.
Despite the fact that it’s early afternoon as I write this, and the sun is the only thing to split blue skies, I might just pour another one.
I am on holiday after all.
Score: 7/10
Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. FMc
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