Ardmore 17 Year Old 2000 Cask #CM 242 (The House of MacDuff)

A 17 year old single cask Ardmore from The House of MacDuff's Golden Cask Reserve range, distilled in 2000 and bottled in 2017 at 55.3% natural strength. The House of MacDuff has operated as a steady small format indie bottler from the early 2000s onwards, with the Golden Cask Reserve range carrying the longer aged single cask outturns. The 2000 vintage falls just before the 2001 wash still heating transition at Kennethmont, with this cask filled during the final year of direct coal firing. 136 bottles for the Netherlands.

Filled at 63.5% into a single ex Bourbon refill American oak cask in 2000, the spirit matured in dunnage at Kennethmont through both the Allied Distillers and early Fortune Brands ownership periods. Seventeen years brought the strength to 55.3%, with no chill filtration applied at bottling.

The cask reads as a classic late coal era profile. Refill American oak gives cis whisky lactone as soft coconut and pine, vanillin and syringaldehyde from oak lignin build baked custard and clove. Direct coal flame in the wash stills generated furfurals and melanoidins that carry through as toasted oat and caramelised brown sugar at this maturity. Apple and pear esters from the Kerry yeast component sit at the centre, with inland peat reading as heather smoke, dry leaf and earthy phenolic at integrated moderate intensity.