Ardnamurchan 7 Years Old 2018 Single Cask Limited Edition

Distilled in 2018 and bottled in 2025 from a single Oloroso sherry cask, this is a 7 Years Old Ardnamurchan at 60.5% ABV. The expression was bottled without dilution as a Limited Edition single cask selection for the German market.

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 seven years.

Oloroso sherry maturation drives the spirit through rancio chemistry, where slow polyphenol and aldehyde oxidation during the sherry's prior cask life generates 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 exceptionally high cask strength of 60.5% reflects modest evaporation loss across seven years of cool dunnage maturation, preserving fermentation derived esters and higher alcohols alongside the developed sherry influence. 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.