Ardbeg 10 Years Old 1993 Bourbon Hogshead 57.3% (Cadenhead’s)

Cadenhead's 1842 Aberdeen heritage and the 1989 Authentic Collection programme are anchored by the single cask philosophy: each bottling captures the individuality of one barrel, drawn unfiltered, uncoloured and at cask strength. The 1993 Ardbeg 10 year old quartet released in 2004 demonstrates the principle directly, with four casks of identical vintage, identical age and identical cask format yielding four distinctly different ABVs (57.3%, 58.6%, 58.8% and 59.8%).

Filled into a refill bourbon hogshead in 1993 during Allied Distillers's intermittent reopening and matured for ten years before bottling in 2004 at 57.3% ABV, non chill filtered with no added colour. The 57.3% reading is the lowest of the four sibling bottlings, indicating a slightly more humid warehouse position where ethanol attrition runs faster against water loss.

Lower retained ABV at this age delivers a slightly different chemistry balance from the higher strength siblings. Cis and trans oak lactones (coconut, oiled wood) build at moderate concentration, while hemicellulose breakdown furans (caramel, toasted almond) and lignin vanillin and syringaldehyde (vanilla, baking spice) express more freely at lower ethanol concentration. The 1993 Allied era peat phenols (guaiacol, syringol, 4 methylguaiacol, p cresol) read at strong intensity, with the Ardbeg purifier ester signature delivering pineapple, lemon and tropical fruit beneath the integrated phenolic core.