Ardnamurchan 5 Years Old 2016 AD/03:16 CK.288

Distilled in March 2016 as part of batch AD/03:16 and bottled in 2021 from single Pedro Ximenez sherry cask CK.288, this is a 5 Years Old Ardnamurchan at 59.7% ABV. The expression was bottled without dilution for the German market as a single cask selection from the distillery's third year of production.

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 five 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. At five years the heavy PX register is forward in the profile, with the underlying distillate character still expressing alongside the developing wood interaction. Peated phenols (guaiacol, syringol, 4 methylguaiacol from St Fergus Highland peat at 30 to 35 ppm) from the peated portion of the split production integrate as smoke backbone.