Connoisseur's Manual
Read More Read an excerpt from The Field Guide. Aberlour Orange-gold hue. Good weight. Quite rich and smooth with a definite sherry cask sweet side. Vaguely reminiscent of the 10 Year Old Macallan, but with less depth and a more forthright manner. It has spirit, though, as well as a finely rounded balance between soft malt and peat-oak dryness. Makes an excellent early evening armchair whisky. Priced for purchase. The retail cost has actually declined. Character: *** 12 Year Old This velvety version predates the 10 Year Old. I have not seen it in some time. Almost too easy to drink, especially after dinner. However, I prefer the marginally greater spirit of the younger, eighty-six proof incarnation. Character: ** 18 Year Old Sherry Cask Matured Greater age brings increased complexity, staying power and roughly three times the cost. A golden mahogany hue. Subtle beyond reproach. The sherried effect is not so pronounced as to overwhelm this malt’s fresh mintiness. A civilized Speysider that slips down with style and ease. Yet Glenfarclas and Macallan need not worry, for real Scotch is not solely about civility. Character: *** Here's an excerpt from The Armchair Reference Manual. Feeling The Heat: The Highlands, Speyside, near the foothills of the Cairngorm Mountains and Clashindarroch Forest, in Kennethmont. Owner: Allied Domecq Ardmore is inextricably associated with the Teachers of 19 th Century whisky fame. And the distillery’s seeds were quite possibly sown during William Teacher’s own childhood. William Teacher had barely passed his seventh birthday when he trode off to toil alongside his widowed mother in a cotton-mill. Stints as a tailor’s apprentice and grocer’s assistant followed for the young man. Those early hardships inevitably imbued Teacher, during adulthood, with a fervent wish that his offspring might experience a less Dickensian upbringing. William wed the provisioner’s daughter Agnes, and assumed control of the McDonald family’s store. Teacher then expanded the spirits merchandising side of the business, into which he brought his two sons, William Jr. and Adam. Long-term popularity of Teacher’s Highland Cream Blended Scotch hinged on a secure source of malt whisky. The Teachers, like many of their competitors, wanted to own a distillery. They could have attempted purchasing an existing enterprise. But Adam proposed the idea of a new site instead. Plans were drawn up, and the family acquired a plot of eastern Speyside terrain in 1895. This land was located where many springs flowed from 1400-foot-high Knockandy Hill. Construction of Ardmore’s fieldstone buildings commenced in 1897, adjacent to a rail-line. Ardmore officially opened in 1898. The operation employed 16 or more full-time workers, and its two coal-fired pot-stills began to produce whisky within a year. Barley, much of it grown throughout the surrounding Aberdeenshire countryside, streamed in via the Northern Agricultural firm and other smaller grain merchants. Ardmore ’s creation came at great cost. Escalating expenditures drove distillery and parent company to the edge of insolvency. But Adam’s risk-riddled concept succeeded in the end, even if Adam himself did not survive to see his family’s Kennethmont cornerstone filling casks with warming whisky and coffers with cold cash. Fast-forwarding some 50 years, Ardmore Distillery underwent major expansion during the last half of the 20 th Century. The two original stills doubled to four in 1955, and another four vessels were installed in 1974. Allied Distillers (now Allied Domecq) purchased the premises two years later. Ardmore , one of Scotland’s largest malt whisky sites, veered onto the slippery slope of discarding traditional methods a quarter century ago. The distillery malted its own grain on-site until the late 1970s, but now purchases from external maltsters. Ardmore does at least favor, in the old Highland manner, rather heavily peated barley with a phenolic degree of some ten parts per million. And a 19 th Century steam engine, boiler front and other momentos from the past are carefully maintained for cosmetic purposes. More troubling of late is Allied’s decision to perform radical surgery within the still-house. Ardmore’s eight-strong array of 15,000-litre pot-stills stands in a single row. The copper vessels’ rhythmic contours are modulated only by the four spirit-stills’ higher necks. Flaming coals directly heated Ardmore’s pot-stills until very recently. Economizing appears to be the new millennium’s modus operandi, however. Those coal fires have been doused and the rummagers removed. Robert Hick, Allied’s master blender, strongly promotes Ardmore. And Kennethmont’s hearty brew still figures prominently in the Teacher’s Highland Cream brand. Nevertheless, Ardmore Single Malt remains available almost exclusively through independent whisky specialists. If only Ardmore’s promotion matched the whisky’s reputation. For the moment at any rate - it has a vigorous style. |