Ardnamurchan 5 Years Old 2015 SMWS 149.2 Peaty Peninsula

Bottled by the Scotch Malt Whisky Society in 2021 as cask 149.2 with the SMWS tasting title Peaty Peninsula, this is a 5 Years Old Ardnamurchan from 2015 distilled spirit at 60.7% ABV. The expression is from Oloroso sherry maturation and was bottled without dilution for the Netherlands. SMWS code 149 is the Society's distillery code for Ardnamurchan, making this the second cask from the distillery released through the Society.

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 Oloroso sherry cask and matured on site at Glenbeg in dunnage warehousing for five years.

Oloroso sherry maturation drives the spirit through rancio chemistry generating the dried fruit, leathery and nutty register characteristic of long sherry contact. Maillard reaction products from hemicellulose oak sugars add chocolate and toasted depth. The SMWS title points to the peated character of the underlying spirit, with the cask drawn from the peated portion of the split distillery regime. 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.