Ardnamurchan Hand Fill PX 783
6yo Distillery Exclusive Octave | 54.2% ABV
Score: 8/10
Something Special.
TL;DR
Another nugget found in the long seam of Ardnamurchan gold.
The inner sanctum of Glenbeg.
I think I’ll call it the post-magic droop. Or maybe the trough of truth, if fun could be equated to a sine wave.
There’s almost certainly some unicorn sprinkles that form when the uisge beatha is introduced into an atmosphere that’s already electrified. A few weeks ago I sat shotgun on a journey to the towering field of dreams, stacked on a hillside looking outwards to the small island of Oronsay; the place that makes my synapses spark twice as hard; the cyclical system of uber-whisky: Ardnamurchan Distillery. Which is probably why I feel a bit ”low energy” since.
A top secret mission that was only as secret as the Instagram accounts of the parties involved, we spent the day doing secret things like standing on top of cask stows to feel how warm the air was in the upper tier of Warehouse 1. We did other secret things too, like try an octave that decanted a whisky of such dark treacle gloopiness that, when flung back onto the same cask, the glass remained amber in colour. We secretly walked about. We secretly tried a few more things. We secretly looked at the things maturing ready for release soon, and a few other really incredible things that I am not at liberty to divulge. Thank you for reading, have a lovely day.
Seriously though, it’s almost impossible to translate the experience into words. Bonds form between people in ways that are difficult to explain, down in the hazy depths of whisky nirvana. Truths are spilled out in strained, joined up speaking. Emotions run red hot and sometimes, in the days following, visions of things said appear in fleeting vignettes that can sometimes make the face screw up in awkward cringe, but in that moment it felt like the right thing to say. OK. Maybe I did tell Connal that I love him, but what happens on the jetty stays on the jetty.
The most buoyant person ever to have existed? Carl Crafts at work/play
The following day we were all a bit frayed. I spent the night baking under a sun-warmed ceiling and awoke with a shooting pain in my left big toe. Looking down through half-shut crusty eyeballs I saw that my toe was dark red, having bled profusely and congealed overnight into a comedy toe, like I’d hit it with a big hammer. In my slumber I had no idea why or how, but once the brain gears were engaged and thinking back through our frolics, at one point or another we all had cuts on knees, legs and arms. It must have been barnacles or mussels or razor blades on the underside of the jetty from which we all leapt into Loch Sunart. Side note: nothing sobers you up more than the chill of a west-coast sea loch. My big toe, through a lively shower experience, was found to be missing its tip.
Wandering up to the water source for the distillery in the morning with Big Carl Crafts, Ardnamurchan’s latest recruit of American provenance, gigantic proportions and comprised of at least 80% foam going by how buoyant he is in sea water - we all ruminated on the state of play inside the whisky industry right now, and how absurd it is that experts in their field create masterful, beautiful spirits only to watch the marketing departments or bean counters snuff out any semblance of craft. With relief, we see no such practices at Glenbeg.
After being bitten by midges and getting pre-burnt by the morning sun, it was shop time and I procured a bottle of the latest hand-fill before bidding farewell to an unforgettable whisky-life moment, travelling back home to prepare for sailing to Campbeltown on Friday. Phase one in the week of whisky dreams was undeniably, unfathomably successful.
Review
Distillery Hand Fill Exclusive - PX Octave Cask 783, 54.2% ABV
£70 / £63 with AD/Venturers Discount
These wee distillery shop octaves are fantastic value for money. Not only are you being offered cask strength, matured Ardnamurchan spirit in some interesting casks, but the nature of an octave means that you are getting expedited whisky; something that has matured faster than the big butts or hogsheads sleeping patiently up in the warehouses. You can find a more complex whisky as a result, or as most in the distillery look at these octave casks, an indication of where Ardnamurchan whisky might be in a few more years time. Accelerated insight.
When I visited in April the octave on offer was a peated five year old whisky. This time it’s an unpeated PX octave the colour of American walnut. I’m a member of the AD/Venturer club and so enjoyed a perk of 10% discount, bringing the price of this whisky to £63. Wanting to share the love and my happenstance of access, I offered it as a split to Hamish and Jackie, 2/3rds of our “An Englishman, Irishman and Scotsman” bottle share, to which they agreed. Decanting it into the wee 200ml bottles the smell was absolutely wonderful - rich, dark fruits and salty biscuits. But I put the stoppers back on all the bottles and placed them on the shelf - I wanted to let the big bottle breathe for a week or so, just because I had a million other things to do, and to photograph.
Score: 8/10
Something Special.
TL;DR
Another nugget found in the long seam of Ardnamurchan gold.
Nose
Sweet, plant-like coconut - gorse. Chocolatey and minty - a macaroon bar. Earthy. Rainy earth. With time it opens up to the bright red firework that some align to sulphur, but I align to a matchbox striker - salty, mineralic, burnt oak sticks.
Water: green veggies. Peas. A wee bit of celery. Transitions into a mid-red. The wonderful toasty wood matches and salt now kicks up slightly. Fantastic.
Palate
Bright red flash followed by the coconut chocolate minty bar. Fresh. Gorse. Saline and rocky. The matchbox striker follows the nose into the palate and I’m loving every sip - it’s bright, vivid and moreish. With the sweeter chocolatey notes mixed amongst the toastier notes of nuts and wood, it balances out into a powerful sipper.
Water: Matches. Salt. Sweet red. Biscuits. Toffee Pops. There’s an earthiness as well, a grounding - not dusty but fresh soil. A hint of greens comes through too - celery mostly. It’s not a big note but present nonetheless. Peppery. Some cinnamon and ginger spices. Treacle pip. The dram in the glass is gone too quickly and with remorse. I should be savouring this but the whisky is so moreish I can’t help drawing it into my face with speed.
The Dregs
I would be lying if I said that a few times during the time with my 1/3rd bottle of this I didn’t have fleeting pangs of regret for splitting it with Hamish and Jackie. This is a bottle that stands as one of the great examples of sherried Ardnamurchan around, for me - it’s got the brightness of Glenbeg spirit with all the lovely salty seaside marine notes that I adore so much about Ardnamurchan’s character, with another vivid yet dark red layer of fruitiness above it. Absolute resonance with my palate and what I seek in whisky - powerful, bright, illuminating and angular, coastal, earthy, rich and rocky. Now that I have 230ml instead of 700ml I have to make important drinking choices.
But then I look at the wee labels I’ve printed, aligned on the diddy-bottles that we send between each other, and feel genuinely excited that the boys will get to experience this too. The selfishness of wanting to keep it all to myself wisps away and the thrill of sharing whisky replaces it ten-fold. Finding fantastic whisky is exciting, but nothing beats finding a gem and watching as other people discover it too; I really hope that they like it as much as I do. It’s a snapshot in time: cask 783 is now empty and replaced in the distillery shop by another PX cask of untested character.
A small part of me does persistently regret not filling two bottles when I had the chance, but straight after my trip to Glenbeg I travelled to Campbeltown, where I picked up many more bottles of fantastic, interesting and endearing whisky - some which I’ve split, some which I’ve not and some which I’ve reviewed already. I need to relinquish the knee-jerk hoarding instinct to have multiple identical bottles of whisky in reserve for future. I forget that the very next bottle of whisky, now that I’m managing to find what works for my palate, will no doubt be just as exciting and interesting as the last. I’d far rather keep experiencing new things right now, than revisiting the same over and over, even if it’s as good as this.
I also don’t have the finances or the capacity in the whisky zone for two of every whisky that tickles my fancy. We are living in the golden age of whisky, and being short of it or worrying that whisky is suddenly going to get crap and thus rueing the day I could’ve safeguarded against such atrocities… it’s just not going to happen.
Another big nugget found in the long seam of Ardnamurchan gold. It’ll not be long before the next swing of the hammer reveals more - the Aberdeen single cask, the new sherry cask release and the 2023 Paul Launois are inbound. The buzz about each one from the team, especially the Launois, as well as a new bottle design, new label design and a large, 15,000 bottle out-turn for the sherry cask, makes me think we are on the cusp of witnessing a step-change in Ardnamurchan’s trajectory. More people are talking about Ardnamurchan than ever before, which makes sense given that they only started releasing core range whisky in 2020 - the graph of Ardnamurchan’s popularity currently looks like the North Face of the Eiger. I just hope I can hang on to the side of the rocket once it fully ignites and takes to the sky.
Score: 8/10
Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. DC
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