Ardnamurchan The Midgie & Ardnamurchan Paul Launois 2024

Ardnamurchan The Midgie

Region: Higlands

ABV: 48.0%

Price: £51.50 

This new Ardnamurchan release, a collaboration with Smidge to celebrate one of Scotland's national treasures—the midge—combines 13 Bourbon barrels, 1 Sherry butt, 5 Sauternes barriques, and 5 Madeira barriques. It features a blend of 60% peated and 40% unpeated spirit. This year's release is exclusive to the UK, with only 6,200 bottles available.

Nose

The nose opens with lemon cheesecake, vanilla fondant icing, freshly baked pastries, and a little highland peaty funk. There’s also grape must, apricot jam, sherbet and some brûléed banana. Going back, we’re getting freshly squeezed orange juice, runny honey and a little golden syrup. The alcohol feels present but in good balance, there’s no overly spicy notes to be found.

Palate

The palate opens with honey nut cheerios, mellow highland peat, freshly turned earth, dried apricots, simple white sugar and cookie dough. There’s also a bit of white chocolate, black pepper spice and puréed ginger as it moves into the finish. The finish has a decent length, mostly oak spice and light, earthy peat smoke that lingers on. The mouthfeel is good, fairly rounded and viscous. Going back, we’re finding more orange, this time the rind, warm oak spice and a little grapefruit too.

Nose (with water)

The reduced nose has more caramel and fudge coming through, brown sugar sweetness too. The peatsmoke has dissipated a tad, and it’s creamier overall. The banana has also appeared at the forefront, covered in caramel sauce.

Palate (with water)

The reduced palate loses a touch of the mouthfeel, and gains a little bit of acidity, lemon wedge, citric acid, moving into sawn wood and mellow chocolate and fudge aromas. We don’t think water helps the palate too much, brings out a bit too much of the dry oak.

Conclusion

This is a pretty good small batch release from Ardnamurchan. There’s lots of bourbon sweetness but we can detect some of the notes that we believe the Madeira, Sauternes and sherry casks have added to the mix. It’s a bit hot and slightly bitter in places, but it’s a good quality dram.

Score: 7/10

Value

We’d have liked to have seen this a few pounds cheaper, but the price is in line with the distilleries other small batch releases.

Ardnamurchan Paul Launois 2024

Region: Highlands

ABV: 57.3%

Price: £70.00

This year’s release is a marriage of 12 Bourbon barrels re-racked in Paul Launois white wine casks (which were used in the making of their Champagne) and one bourbon cask, all unpeated. 3,198 bottles were released.

Nose

The nose opens with a little fresh pear, lemon sherbet, green grape, melon balls, alongside a bit of charred oak and light wisps of highland forest. It’s got fairly strong and pronounced aromas, and these marry well with the high 50s ABV. Going back, there’s also a little mushy apple, unripe peach, sweet oat biscuits and freshly squeezed orange juice. Fairly fruity, with accents of some creamier, custardy aromas.

Palate

The palate opens with more of that zesty citrus, a combination of orange and lemon primarily, fairly light and refreshing. The dram quickly moves into richer flavours of caramel wafers, toffee crisp bars, ruby chocolate, icing sugar and a little grapefruit tonic. There’s a fair bit of spice coming through, mild pepper, clove and tingly Szechuan peppercorns. The mouthfeel is fairly silky, oily, quite pleasant. There’s a tinge of coastal salinity in the background too. The finish is fairly long, with flying saucer sweets and salted caramel.

Nose (with water)

The reduced nose gets richer, mirroring the latter part of the palate with caramel and chocolate coming to the fore. There’s still a spritzy-ness however you have to go looking for it. There’s some apple here too, green apple slices dipped in caramel.

Palate (with water)

The reduced palate maintains the silky, creamy mouthfeel, and we’re still getting the citrus forward notes like before. In a similar vein, the palate transforms into richer, chocolate fudge flavours complimented by some digestive biscuits. There’s still a reasonable spice, it feels more like a carbonated drink sensation than rough alcohol.

Conclusion

Another solid Paul Launois release, a step up from last years and closer to the 2021/2022 versions. It’s pretty well balanced, lots of fresh citrus and fruit aromas alongside some richer flavours on the palate. A touch hot in places, but that’s to be expected from a younger whisky. Somewhere between a 7.5 and 8, but we’ll go with 8/10.

Score: 8/10

Value

We're not going to complain; the price is consistent with last year's release, and cask strength whisky generally isn't priced significantly lower than £70 these days.

• 10 - Perfection. One in a million
• 9 - Outstanding. Exceptional whisky.
• 8 - Great. Would seek this out.
• 7 - Good. Quality whisky.
• 6 - Above average. Happy to have a dram.
• 5 - Average. Drinkable whisky.
• 4 - Below average. Passable.
• 3 - Flawed. Noticeable negatives.
• 2 - Defective. Significant faults.
• 1 - Offensive. Pour it out.

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