Ardmore 1990 - 19 Year Old - First Cask - Single Cask 30107

Ardmore is a Highland malt whisky distillery founded in 1898 by the Teacher’s family to supply single malt whisky for their famous blend. Teacher’s was taken over by Allied Breweries in 1976, by which time Ardmore had expanded to eight stills. Allied was itself swallowed by Jim Beam Brands in 2005, and Ardmore was launched as a single malt in 2007 with the release of Ardmore Traditional Cask. Jim Beam merged with the Japanese drinks giant Suntory in 2014. 

Ardmore makes both peated and unpeated spirit, but only the peated version is bottled as single malt. Prior to the Jim Beam takeover, the only official Ardmores were a handful of legendary heavily sherried 1970s bottlings by Teacher’s and a pair of centenary bottlings from 1999. Under Beam/Suntory, official Ardmores are now widely available, while independent Ardmore is abundant and generally of excellent quality.

The First Cask range was a prolific series of single malt whisky bottlings by the UK’s largest mail order wine company Direct Wines Ltd, owner of Laithwaite’s and The Sunday Times Wine Club. From the early 1990s until the mid-Noughties Direct Wines released dozens of outstanding single cask whiskies annually under the First Cask label, almost all of which were bottled at 46%.

These whiskies were not particularly highly sought-after on release, probably because they were only sold online through a wine club.  Back then, of course, it was not widely known that the casks had been sourced from Signatory Vintage, which would certainly have raised their profile among whisky fans. Nowadays, although still frequently excellent value at auction, the First Cask collection - which includes hundreds of long-aged whiskies from distilleries including Brora, Port Ellen, Ardbeg and Macallan - is finally getting the recognition it deserves.