Ardnamurchan 8 Years Old 2016 AD/10:16 Cask 998 Peated

Distilled in October 2016 as part of batch AD/10:16 and bottled in 2024 from single Pedro Ximenez sherry cask 998, this is an 8 Years Old peated Ardnamurchan at 59.1% ABV. The expression draws exclusively from peated production runs and was bottled without dilution for the German market.

Production followed Ardnamurchan's standard regime. Concerto barley was milled into a copper topped semi lauter mash tun, fermented 72 to 120 hours on a single strain distiller's yeast, then double distilled through copper pot stills with reflux boil balls to a new make of 74 to 76% ABV. Spirit was filled at 63.5% into a single Pedro Ximenez sherry cask and matured on site at Glenbeg in dunnage warehousing for eight years.

Pedro Ximenez is the most concentrated sherry style for cask finishing, drawn from grapes sun dried to raisin stage before pressing. Residual PX sugars and high viscosity wine remnants soaked into the wood drive heavy raisin, fig and dark dried fruit notes through sotolon and related lactones, with rancio chemistry adding nutty and old wood register. As a peated only single cask the phenol load reads at its full intensity against the heavy PX foreground. Peated phenols (guaiacol, syringol, 4 methylguaiacol from St Fergus Highland peat at 30 to 35 ppm) carry through at full intensity, framing the cask interaction with structural smoke.