Ardmore 7 Year (SMWS 66.192 "The Dalai Farmer")

 

I am such an aficionado of Ardmore - a Highland distillery owned by Japanese beverage giant Suntory - that I love basically every bottle I've come across. Originally built by William Teacher's son Adam, to supply blend fodder for Teacher's Highland Cream, they did have a small core selection of single malts for some time. 

Unfortunately, my delightful original experience with their official distillery bottling, the Traditional Cask (no age statement), was short-lived - Ardmore pulled it from the market, and whatever they've replaced it with has taken years to come out, and doesn't seem to be widely available in the American market. At least, I can't find it anywhere. Which leaves independent bottlers. 

I've tried everything from 7 year to 15 year independent bottlings of Ardmore, and am always amazed at what a chameleon the distillery can be. They can produce light, fruity unpeated whiskies that are perfectly delicate summer sippers; they can produce heavy duty coal-and-tar bombs reeking with smoke that are best had on a dark, cold, windy winter night. I had an independent bottling of Ardmore that tasted exactly like raw oysters. Amazing. 

I don't know if this is a result of clever casking or if they can really just adjust their distillate that wildly. What I do know is that I have adored every bottle of theirs I've come across. When I ran across the official tasting note for this one, I knew I had to buy it:

Initially we got soft, fragrant smokiness tinged with wispy farmyard notes. Things like old iron railings, abandoned tractors and gutters full of rainwater and leaf mulch all came to mind. Also smashed slates, hot coal embers and starched linens scented with distant peat smoke. With water came bog myrtle, anthracite, oily sheep wool, metallic paints and pork sausages with sage. The mouth was initially full of coal tar soap, lanolin, smoky heather ales, olive oil and bacon lardons frying on a hot iron skillet. A sense of steel wool doused in soy sauce. Water added hot cross buns drizzled with mercurochrome, smoked olives, pasta water and aniseed sweeties. A drizzle of natural tar liqueur in the aftertaste.

Iron railings! Tractors! Gutters!!! I'll take it. 

Peated and aged for 7 years in a first-fill bourbon barrel, and bottled at a very nice 61.5%, let's see if I can get any bog myrtle or metallic paint out of this:

Nose: Wow, this is intense stuff. Farmyard notes, indeed: rust, rainwater, mulch are all right on the money. Red vinegar. Rotting hay (!). Minerals for DAYS - this seems to be something of an Ardmore signature - it's like oyster shells, crushed and distilled. Coal. Sweetish coal. Like opening a coal bin near a grill with coconut chicken skewers cooking, and inhaling deeply. It's incredibly industrial with hints of normality. I love it. 

With water and a rest in the glass, it does sweeten up a bit - brown sugar, specifically. But the rest of the nose is straight off the farm. Wild stuff. Riotous, even. Totally unchained. 

Deeper in the bottle, I get grape candy. Like grape Jolly Ranchers, maybe. 

Mouthfeel: Thick, oily. So thick it's almost gelatinous. 

Palate: What in hell...!? This has some really strange flavors going on - although, to be fair, they are all strange-in-a-good-way, to me. Coal dust, metal, paint, olive oil, raw meat/au jus... but also the steel-wool-in-soy-sauce mentioned in the official notes, which is so bizarre. A really curious mix of industrial flavors. I hardly know what to make of this!

With water and time: Sweeter than before, but with the same overtones of metal and paint and coal. Very weird. I still don't quite know what to make of this one. 

Then... after delving deeper in the bottle: grape-flavored Nerds candy! Not kidding. It's very distinct, amid a constellation of farm scents and flavors. Totally wacky. 

Finish: Smoke lays across your tongue, and won't leave. It's accompanied, briefly, by hot peppers and iodine and metal and rust. It's a curious finish that lasts a very long time. 

Verdict: Wow, this is a weird one. I have very little idea of how Ardmore produced these flavors, but I'm glad they did - I've never tasted such a strong "rust" flavor like I have here. It's very unique - which I suspect 95% of Scotch drinkers would dislike or outright hate - but I like. This is one of the weirdest alcoholic experiences I've had. That alone makes it valuable to me, but I suspect most people would pass on this, pass very hard. I like it, though. Ardmore!