Ardnamurchan Spirit 2016/AD - Limited Release No.1

Ardnamurchan is a small Highland distillery owned by the independent whisky bottlers Adelphi, one of whose co-owners, Donald Houston, is the laird of the Ardnamurchan estate in Western Highlands where the distillery was constructed in 2014. Ardnamurchan has one pair of stills making both peated and unpeated spirit and has a capacity of around half a million litres per annum.

After a series of limited work-in-progress bottlings, Ardnamurchan’s first single malt whisky was released in 2020. The inaugural single malt whisky bottling, Ardnamurchan AD/09.20:01, in common with most subsequent releases, was a combination of the distillery’s peated and unpeated spirit matured in both sherry and bourbon casks, and has been met with general acclaim.

Distillery bottlings are, as the name suggests, bottled by or for the distillery from which the whisky has originated and are thus often referred to as Official Bottlings or OBs. Distillery bottlings are generally more desirable for collectors and usually fetch higher prices at auction than independent bottlings. They are officially-endorsed versions of the whisky from a particular distillery and are therefore considered the truest expression of the distillery’s character.

This ideal of the distillery character is regarded so seriously by the distilleries and brand owners that casks of whisky that are considered to vary too far from the archetype are frequently sold on to whisky brokers and independent bottlers. When this happens, it is often with the proviso that the distillery’s name is not allowed to be used when the cask is bottled for fear of diminishing or damaging the distillery’s character and status.