Ardmore 2009-2015 - 5 Year Old - Creative Whisky Company - Exclusive Malts -

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 Creative Whisky Company is an independent bottler created by husband and wife team Susan and David Stirk in late 2004. David Stirk had previously worked for both Whisky Magazine and Cadenhead’s and had picked up good contacts in the industry and experience in cask selection and bottling. 

The Creative Whisky Co. company bottled hundreds of malt and grain whiskies from 2005 onwards, the majority of which were single casks bottled at cask strength for the company’s Exclusive Malts series. These whiskies were very fairly priced at the time and remain good value at auction. The Stirks sold the business in 2018 to a private consortium, and no further bottlings have appeared at the time of writing in 2022.