Ardmore 1993

Ardmore 1993 distillery malt from Gordon & Macphail. On the border of the Highlands and Speyside, comes this amazing schizophrenic whisky. I say this not just because it lives on the border of two major regions, but its barley is dried in the same way as the Southern Islay whiskies using peat!

So what does this create? The speyside characters give it honey sweetness, the highland offers rich maltiness and the peat rounds out the flavours. The peat comes from Aberdeen shire and the beauty of the peat is that it is clean. It doesn’t have that iodine, saltiness that the Islay’s have.

On the Eastern edge of Speyside at Kennethmont between the River Bogie, the Clashindarroch Forest and the foothills of the Grampian mountains lies Ardmore Distillery. The distillery was built in 1898 and named after the giant mountains that surround it, “big slope”, in Gaelic: “Ard-Moi”.

Around the turn of the 19th century the whisky industry spiraled into decline, but Ardmore saw out the “whisky recession”, as the major supplier of the single malt component of Teachers Highland Cream blend. It has gone from strength to strength and now has 8 stills in total, making it a very large distillery producing 4.2 million litres of new make spirit. Thankfully some of it made it into first fill Bourbon Casks and aged for 16 years.

Jim Murray hasn’t reviewed the Ardmore 1993 yet – but he said of the Ardmore 1991: “this is a simply brilliant whisky, that no whisky lover can afford to be without. Startling… 94 points.”

Colour: first thing in the morning, light golden.

Nose: lightly peated. integrated herbs such as thyme and sage. Rich vanilla and rich malty sweetness.

Palate: Rich flavour from the peat, then the barley sugar sweetness, overlaid with vanilla. Licorice flavoured vanilla ice cream. Full flavoured, well balanced creamy and rich. Yum.