Ardnagain
TL;DR: After a very dry January, we are on the road again, direction: West Coast…of Scotland, of course. It is also the first whisky trip with our new vehicle: Mr. Vantastic! First destination of the trip is an “old” acquaintance, the Ardnamurchan distillery. Such a great place, a must-do for every whisky enthusiast!
The year 2023 started similarly to 2022, and 2021: dry. Not exactly the entire January, but still 4 weeks, from the 3rd to the 1st or 2nd of February. Gianluigi managed to sneak in a blood donation right before boozing again: perfect timing!
Because of this, the first whisky trip of the year couldn’t be before February. We were quite impatient, mostly because of a big novelty in our life in Scotland, our first vehicle: Mr. Vantastic, the campervan! We bought this second-hand van, newly converted to campervan in December, after a 1-2 months search. Unfortunately, being December, it had to stay in the parking space for a couple of weeks while we were stuffing ourselves with food in Italy. In January, our maiden trip (to try it out) was a dry one: we went visit the Bamburgh Castle, just south of the border, inspired by The Last Kingdom series, which we thoroughly watched a few months back (“I am Uthred, son of Uthred”!). We learned a thing: sleeping in the pop-up roof is like sleeping in a tent on top of a car, strongly advised against in early January.
Finally, February came, and we could take Mr. Vantastic out for a more serious trip: the West of Scotland, more precisely Ardnamurchan and Mull! We prepared ourselves and left on the Thursday evening after dinner, so to avoid the morning outbound road traffic from Leith. We actually drove a bit more than planned, until right past Callander. In spite of having a few more hours of sleep in the morning, we woke up quite early because of the excitement: it’s the first time we were going to visit the Ardnamurchan Distillery after they released their single malt! During our previous trip, we could only try their spirit and the Adelphi blend.
The drive was quite amazing: Tyndrum, Bridge of Orchy, Glencoe, and then the short ferry crossing at Carron: actually very short, as we managed to get on the boat just a few seconds before it left the pier. After the crossing, we drove towards the Ardnamurchan peninsula, on the usual single-track road. We drove past the distillery, because we had decided to park in a spot a couple of miles ahead, where we could just spend the night or at least give us some time and a “nice” recovery walk after the tasting and before driving again. This was a sensible idea in theory (we felt so wise!), but we’ll see how it terribly backfired. By the way, the spot is quite amazing, in front of McLean’s Nose (we were not aware of the new Adelphi blended whisky at the time), a truly stunning view: in spite of the cloud and wind, we could have stayed hours there just enjoying the landscape.
The walk to the distillery took about 35-40 minutes, but we still arrived a bit early. Julie welcomed us, and we browsed the shop for a while before DJ picked us up for the tour. In the meanwhile, we found out that there was no distillery exclusive/bottle your own because paperwork was not there yet, ouch! The curse of bureaucracy haunting us! Tour-wise, we had chosen the “Behind the scenes” tour, a more in depth experience compared to the one we did in 2019, and it also came with a discount because Gianluigi is member of the distillery AD/Venturers club. We were the only ones on the tour, so that meant “free question time” (sorry, DJ!).
We started in the dunnage warehouses behind the main building, on two levels. DJ explained us the (very eye-pleasing) colour coding of the casks and gave us some anticipations about future annual releases, which will join the Paul Launois, Madeira, and cask strength expressions. We then moved back to the main building, where we went through production. We hadn’t forgotten how compact the distillery is, and how tiny the stills are, and the boiler fuelled with biomass from the area: all very sustainable.
Surprise of this tour, we discovered that not both pagoda roofs are just for aesthetics: a malting floor is being set up and, at some point in the future they will malt some of their barley, with and without local peat: really looking forward to it!
DJ then walked us to the tasting room above the shop, where he started pouring us drams: first, the special for the AD/Venture club (a very nice 7y matured in an ex-bourbon barrel, the alternative was a sherried one). The three drams served as part of the tour were the Bruce-McLean bottled by Adelphi, the Paul-Launois 2021 (which we hadn’t tried) and the single cask CK.339 (unpeated), all three quite amazing, so very difficult to single one out. On that day maybe the Bruce-McLean, but on another day we would have probably picked a different one.
Then the mess happened. What we did not took into consideration was the weather. On the way to the distillery, it had started raining but not that much. We thought “oh well, it will go away”. It didn’t. Actually, by the end of the tour it was pouring down. So after the tour we waited a bit, but then we gave up and just left. Of course, by the time we were into the campervan, we were soaked. We spent the next hour drying ourselves up with the diesel-heater and fortunately we had an extra change of clothes and shoes. Teresa just before leaving Edinburgh had asked: “is a second pair of shoes really necessary?” Oh, yes it was.
After some hours drying and warming up, we decided to go get some food in the only local “pub”, the Kilchoan House Hotel bar, in Kilchoan. In spite of the many options on their menu, everything is more or less deep fried, including the sausage Gianluigi ordered, to his surprise. We had a nice wee chat with some locals, although some of them soon left for an event at the community centre club. Again to our surprise, the bar was closed on the next day, which meant no Scotland-Wales 6 Nations game for us. The bartender was very nice though, she kindly allowed us to sleep in the hotel parking lot. Thanks to that we could relax and enjoy a pint.
Despite us almost ruining the day because of our dumbness, we had a great time again on the Ardnamurchan peninsula. The landscape is amazing as we remembered it from our trip back in 2019. There is a feeling of calm and peace when visiting such remote spots. About the distillery, they are one of the few producers we really admire, for their dedication and their ethos, and their ability to supply us with incredible single malt (and blends too!) at still reasonable prices. Their club is run properly, it is obvious that they are whisky enthusiasts and, thus, it is made for whisky enthusiasts, not just another money-making machine. We believe other companies should definitely take notes.
Ardnamurchan Behind the scenes
Price: £50.00 pp (February 2023, £35 for the AD/venturers)
Duration: 2hr
Tasting: 3 drams chosen from what available at the bar
Target: whisky enthusiasts and geeks
Value for money: good
Highlights: the walk in the warehouse
Distillery Exclusive: not available when we were there (due to delay in paperwork…d’oh!)
Recommended: even have to ask?
Link: https://www.adelphidistillery.com/
Dramming around 