SMWS Ardnamurchan 149.3

The Scotch Malt Whisky Society: the club that demands a high entry fee before you get a sniff at their bottlings. It used to be £65 and, at that price, was something I’d been considering more seriously as the months rolled by. That price gets you access to their single cask arsenal of bottles ranging from Glenfarclas through to Glasgow Distillery, all 156 (at the time of writing) scotch whisky distilleries with bottlings ranging from three years old through to multiple decades. There’s a load of non-scotch provenances too, which you can choose from if you so wish. SMWS gives you the chance to try all these things at varying bottle prices, only if you sign up to the club. I hadn’t, so couldn’t immediately get my mitts on the latest Ardnamurchan outturn of two bottlings – Fire Festival: peated 7yo whisky, and A Walk in the Woods: unpeated 6yo whisky. Both sherry casks, albeit oloroso for the former and Pedro Ximinez for the latter.

Not wanting to react immediately and prod the SMWS members in our team to snaffle me one, I said no, not today and watched. And watched. Strange, I thought, given the fervency for Ardna through SMWS that A Walk in the Woods should be available weeks and weeks after release. Same went for the Fire Festival bottling, although that’s now sold out. But A Walk in the Woods is still there, ready to purchase if you are a member. Should I just pony up the fee and get on with it? Well in a disappointing turn of events, SMWS have just increased that entry price to £85.

That’s a lot of money in general, not just for an entry fee, but becoming a member of SMWS does include access to their many tasting rooms and bars dotted around the UK. However if you are not frequenting these places regularly, that perk becomes irrelevant. Early access, glossy publications and pin badges aside, the fee is ultimately to get you in the loop, but that £85 fee is before you start spending anything on whisky which, in the case of A Walk in the Woods , is another £77.50 above. So if I wanted to come in cold and try it, I’d need to spend £162.50. You can perhaps see why I didn’t immediately jump at it. But the niggling Ardnamurchan monster got the better of me in the end and I did eventually ask if I could lean on someone else’s SMWS charity and procure a bottle. Thanks Wally, you are the best.

This bottle is SMWS 149.3 and part of the SMWS “New Wave” release, celebrating 40 years of the society by launching a series of 10 new offerings from three of the UK’s newest distilleries. The New Wave release would be launched in multiple markets around the world. For the UK and EU market we received four of the ten from this range: one from Glasgow distillery (156.3), one from Cotswolds distillery (146.2) and two from Ardnamurchan distillery (149.3 & 149.5). Turns out there’s actually five Ardnamurchan expressions in the series (149.3 – 7), but I don’t know where the other three are going and I can’t seem to find them as yet. Anyway, of the two Ardna options available to the UK I opted for the unpeated one because I’ve very recently tried two peated Ardnas and fancied a change.

The Scotch Malt Whisky Society seem to have a good knack, going by the few I’ve tried, of capturing what is inside the bottle on their label notes – for this New Wave range the notes are replaced with artwork crafted by Bob Dewar, one of the chief architects of the SMWS aesthetics in the beginning. On this label we see a man wearing a bunnet, playing a flute in what seems like the fungal undergrowth. Not sure if that’s meant to be the Dancy Man himself, Sir William Gladstone, or the pied piper or what, but it’s nice to see some colour on the SMWS labels for a change. Turning to the interweb to find some tasting notes we are told:

“Immediately, we were walking in pine forests, hunting mushrooms and smoking pipes; after that the nose wafted brown sugar, toasted marshmallows and clover honey, apple tart, gooseberry jam and plums. The punchy palate delivered caña de lomo, black olives and liquorice paper roll-ups, then chocolate éclair and treacle toffee sweetness, finishing with tannic oak, gingerbread and aniseed balls. The reduced nose suggested salted crackers, boquerones, old book shops and fag packets, shortbread, chocolate raisins and sweet white wine. The palate now combined hot chocolate and iced caramels with orange peel, lemon drops, clove rock, ginger biscuits and nibbling a lady’s glove.”

Nose

Toffee pops. Big rich beautiful toffee biscuits. Cream crackers, oatcakes and seeded Ryvita. Almost a generic pate? Big malty cracker. Vanilla cream. Big lump of buttery fudge.

Outside drammin’ reveals more of the sherry Ardna character I know and love, but the coastal element is still completely absent. Jammie Dodgers.

Palate

Still has a slight salty element but it’s toffee biscuits all the way. A Jammie Dodger dipped in caramel sauce. There’s a wee bit of sour lacing through on the finish, which is nicely integrated – red sharpness. Light citrus tart with buttery pastry. Brandy snaps.

Outside drinking brings the same as the nose and reminds me of the bright reds of the official bottling of the Ardnamurchan oloroso, but still without the coastal element.

The Dregs

SMWS 149.3 is whisky decanted from one first-fill American Oak Pedro Ximinez butt, producing 650 total and delivered at a bold 60.6%. I’ve tried Ardnamurchan from this style of cask before, not just in bottle but from a cask too – it’s utterly stupendously good. Checking the website now after picking my bottle up from Wally’s batcave long after he graciously stored it for me, the New Wave bottles are gone. Not just sold out, but gone from the SMWS website too.

SMWS are the only independent bottlers to take casks of Ardnamurchan off-site for maturation in their own warehouse. That’s important because, unlike all other independent bottled Ardna, which is selected by the bottler from maturing stock inside Glenbeg’s warehouses with only a brief time outside of their premises for bottling, SMWS placed this cask in 2016 into a warehouse that isn’t located on the peninsula, or indeed anywhere near the western Highlands. Which means the cask has been sitting inside a different environment, a different atmosphere, humidity, air pressure and temperature.

I didn’t think it was that important where a whisky cask is stored – whisky is whisky and it matures in a given way depending on the cask type, previous contents and quality of wood. So I asked Alex Bruce, Adelphi managing director, if cask location has an impact on ultimate flavour. Yes was the short answer – it’s why Ardnamurchan leverages the different climate of their Warehouse 1, to give a slightly different environmental impact on their casks in order to manipulate the flavour profile of maturing stock. Warmth seems to be the biggest impacting factor – the warmer it is the quicker things evaporate, the more the wood to spirit ratio increases thus the higher the cask influence.

But is it just heat that changes the profile of a whisky? I mean, I’m living in Scotland, much like the casks and I’m exposed to the fluctuations of temperature throughout the year, from something like negative 15 to positive 30 degrees celsius, on average. Heat then, unless the casks inside SMWS’s warehouse are inside a greenhouse, are subject to the same conditions as the ones sleeping at Glenbeg – granted the construction of the SMWS warehouses might be different and thus overall hotter or colder than Glenbeg, but it’s not like we’re comparing Glenbeg to Barbados, surely? Apart from heat then, what other influences are around to change a whisky’s character – does the duration of time spent between delivery of empty cask and filling with new-make spirit make a difference? Not really, because typically casks – especially sherry casks – are filled very quickly after delivery to retain the sherry cask’s quality and avoid spoiling. 

Well, what about the salinity of the atmosphere? If we think about a cask and its inherent porosity, evaporating alcohol and giving angels their share, we must also consider that a cask isn’t a one-way valve – air goes into the cask as well. So too does moisture – when I was touring the Ardnamurchan warehouse in April I was asked to throw any dregs I didn’t want to finish back on to a cask, because it soaks back into the wood. So it can surely be assumed that the air type, salt content, moisture content and many other factors will soak into the cask as well?

C’mon Doog, what’s all this about? Well the second thing I know is that this expression of Ardnamurchan whisky smells and tastes dramatically different to all other expressions of Ardnamurchan whisky I’ve tried so far. Markedly so. It’s like a liquid Lyons Toffeepop biscuit. Big, malty, biscuit, toffee, cracker notes. There’s some fleeting peeks at some light salinity here and there, but the experience is an overwhelmingly rich tan colour.

So given that the same new-make went into an Ardnamurchan supplied cask, of same provenance and quality as all other casks in their warehouses, and that it was matured for six years much like many of the recent releases from Glenbeg, and that it was in a cask style regularly used by Ardnamurchan for their own whiskies, that leaves one variable: maturation location. How cool is that? To think that a cask can take on such different flavours by its placement in the world. It makes total sense, because we’re all products of our environment – stick a bit of dry wood in a bucket of water and it’ll soak up that water. Stick a bit of dry wood in a furnace and it’ll burn. Stick a cask in a warehouse located by the sea and it’ll soak up all that environment – sea air and coastal wind. Stick a cask in a warehouse located in the middle of a field in the central belt and it’ll soak up all that environment – cow pats and Vauxhall Corsa emissions.

Seriously though, what else could make this Ardnamurchan whisky taste so different to every other expression? Alchemy at play. But does this variance of flavour make it a good whisky? Does it bring something to the table that I wish Ardnamurchan whisky matured at Glenbeg had? Well, not exactly. It’s fantastic to see and experience a twist on the whisky I adore, but I don’t adore it because it tastes like a liquid Toffeepops. I adore it because of that coastal manifestation. I’m inspired by the sea, by the waves, sailing, lighthouses, historic seamanship and tales of the deep. I want to be transported to the coast and reminded of how life seems so much brighter and more grounded when facing the sea.

Something has struck me. The SMWS Deep Impact Dram I won at auction last year presented startlingly like this one – Toffeepop biscuits and jam. It was a bit edgier in the heat department but still, very similar.

The SMWS Warms the Cockles of Your Heart had loads of malty, muffin notes. Looking at Tyree’s SMWS The Subliminal Fruit Bowl of Dreams and SMWS Vanilla Passion reviews, he too found very similar notes in his SMWS whisky – milk bottles sweeties, butter, pastry and biscuits. One or two coincidental similarities is one thing. Five bottles from five different distilleries, all matured under SMWS roofs that all present in a similar way?

I wonder – is this biscuit thing a uniform presence in SMWS bottles? Is the place where they mature their casks of many whiskies causing their whisky to taste similar? Is that even a thing? Is it a definable characteristic of SMWS releases, rather than the distillery, that their whiskies have such a notably uniform flavour profile? I’d love to know if any of you feel the same – let me know below.

In conclusion then, A Walk in the Woods is a really enjoyable, moreish whisky that flows down the facehole with remarkable ease, even at cask strength, and who doesn’t want liquid Toffeepops? Not sure where the forest reference comes from – I found no pine forests or mushrooms – however the other SMWS notes are pretty spot on, as usual. It’s a delectably enjoyable experience. But it’s not the Ardnamurchan I know and love, and doesn’t match up to many of the single cask bangers I’ve been fortunate enough to enjoy these past few years. I poured a wee dram of the CK.339 right after a round of A Walk in the Woods and the difference was staggering. As such I find myself properly liking this whisky, I’m not abjectly loving it.

In the grand scheme of Ardnamurchan, and indeed other whiskies that I’ve tasted recently, this £75 whisky doesn’t quite meet the bang for buck quota of something like the OB Cask Strength at £65. It doesn’t match the meandering magic of Tomatin Cask Strength at £55 and, although very similar in presentation, the SMWS Deep Impact Dram was won for £47 at auction, which is squarely inside the bang for buck drop zone. So it’s a 6 on account of costing £75 to members, and £162.50 for non-members. Another notch on the Ardnamurchan belt regardless. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m away to find my tinfoil hat.