Saturday 5 January 2019

Ardmore 30 1987 Review

Hi everyone,

I had no idea this whisky was coming out until I saw it in Inter. Whisky Frankfurt at the start of December. As it has just come out of Whisky Exchange I thought I’d put up my thoughts.
I’m a big fan of Ardmore. In fact, I have a young barrel of the stuff. The indies are great, the stuff is good quality and they used direct fired stills pre-2002.
There hasn’t been a load of old stuff released and I don’t think I’ve ever seen an Ardmore older than 30 years. Even better, this is at a very reasonable price of £250 and comes in the normal tube and bottle. No fancy decanter and wooden box here, no sir!
 
Ardmore 30 1987 47.2%
Colour: Gold
Body: Medium
Nose: Delicate echoes of smoke, sooty, oily and a little waxy. Sea salt, reminiscent of Brora, dried apple, dried banana, quite an understated nose. Subtly creamy too. More complex as it opens up with machine oil and garage rags. Awesome.
Taste: Soft and sweet, a little flat for a brief moment then more fruity with red apple, black pepper and ginger, nice old smoke and sea salt, quite coastal like an old Talisker, waxy.
Finish: Medium length. More salty with more of the faded old smoke, slightly floral, some lemon sherbet.
Late 2018 release. Fantastic nose, love the Brora elements. I was hoping for a touch more power to the taste and for the finish to be longer or more complex. Don’t get me wrong, its great but I quite like the raw power of the young versions too.
84/100

Thanks for reading!

Scotch Review #717
Whisky Network Review #854

Network Average: 75.1
Best Score: 94
Worst Score: 12
0-49 Terrible
50-59 Bad
60-64 Just About OK
65-69 Ok to Good
70-74 Good
75-79 Very Good
80-84 Excellent
85-89 Superb
90+ Magnificent

Full Disclosure Disclaimer: I currently work as a Brand Ambassador for Penderyn Distillery. The views expressed here are purely my own and do not reflect the views of Penderyn Distillery or The Welsh Whisky Company. I try to maintain as much objectivity as I can but feel free to take my reviews with as big a pinch of salt as you like. Furthermore, my rating scale is NOT based on a Parker type wine scoring scale or a school/college/university % or A-F grade score. You can find more on my scoring here. I apologise for any seemly low or 'bad' scores given with my system and I am sorry I can't say only nice things. Please keep in mind that I am ethically compromised and I am unable to produce 100% unbiased reviews.

No comments:

Post a Comment

VLOG