Ardnamurchan AD/ Sherry Casks Release 2025

Released in 2025 as part of the Ardnamurchan Sherry Casks Release programme, this batch is bottled at 50% ABV from a dual sherry cask vatting of Oloroso and Pedro Ximenez. The distillery presents this expression for the European market, continuing the sherry focused line that runs alongside the AD/ Core Range.

Both peated and unpeated production runs from the distillery's split regime feed this release. Concerto barley is milled into a copper topped semi lauter mash tun, fermented 72 to 120 hours in seven stainless steel washbacks on a single strain distiller's yeast, then double distilled through wash and spirit stills with reflux boil balls to a new make of 74 to 76% ABV. Spirit was filled at 63.5% and matured on site at Glenbeg in dunnage warehousing.

The dual sherry approach plays the contrasting registers of two fortified wine styles. Oloroso casks, aged in oxidative conditions with the flor yeast veil removed, drive the dried fruit and leathery character through rancio chemistry, where slow polyphenol and aldehyde oxidation generates Maillard reaction products absent in unsherried whisky. Pedro Ximenez adds the heavier raisin and fig register through residual PX sugars and sotolon derived lactones carried in the wood. Peated phenols (guaiacol, syringol, 4 methylguaiacol from St Fergus Highland peat at 30 to 35 ppm) from the peated portion of split production sit as smoke backbone behind the sherry foreground.