Ardmore 35 Year Old 1987 Cask #2898 (Gordon & MacPhail)

A 35 year old single cask Ardmore released by Gordon & MacPhail in 2022 under the Connoisseurs Choice Cask Strength banner. The 1987 distillate sits at the heart of the Allied Distillers era, three decades before the 2014 chill filtered Legacy redefined Ardmore's official presence, and the bottling represents the kind of long aged single cask that only G&M's warehouse holdings make possible at this distillery. 171 bottles, drawn from one ex Bourbon refill cask.

Distilled in 1987 from peated barley at the Ardmore house phenol level, the spirit was filled into a single ex Bourbon American oak cask at 63.5% and laid down in Kennethmont. Thirty five years of dunnage maturation took the strength to 57.1% naturally, with no water reduction and no filtration applied at bottling. The wash still still ran on direct coal heating at distillation, producing the heavier oily texture that defines pre 2001 Ardmore.

Long Bourbon maturation reorganises the spirit completely. Coconut and sweet vanillin from cis whisky lactone and oak lignin sit alongside furfurals and melanoidins that have built up since the still itself, giving a baked sugar and tobacco depth. The 12 to 14 ppm phenol load has integrated into a quiet smouldering heather smoke rather than overt peat. Wood derived hemicellulose breakdown over decades adds caramelised toffee and ripe orchard fruit through ethyl hexanoate and isoamyl acetate carrying baked apple and banana skin into the finish.