This is a review I have wanted to do for a very long time, and I was simply waiting for the right moment to do it justice. In front of me sit two bottles that bookend a remarkable little chapter in Ardnamurchan’s story: the very first release of the Ardnamurchan Paul Launois and the newest, the 2026 edition. Tasting them side by side felt like the only honest way to see how far this fascinating young distillery has travelled.
Before diving into the liquid, a quick word on the myth. Everyone insists these are champagne casks, but that is not technically true. The wine that filled these barrels at the Paul Launois vineyard was Chardonnay, the wine that would eventually go on to become champagne. Champagne itself, being carbonated, cannot be aged in wood at all. What we are actually dealing with are French oak barrels from a producer whose grapes are destined for something rather glamorous. Both whiskies are natural colour, unchill-filtered, and built entirely from unpeated stock, arriving at almost identical strengths of 57.6 and 57.4%.
The original release is pure fun in a glass. It bursts with orchard fruits, blossom, and that old pick and mix sweet shop character. I could not decide whether I was smelling lemon or cherry sherbet, and I even caught a watermelon note, which I am fairly sure I have never encountered in a Scotch whisky before.
The palate is huge, lemony and floral, tumbling through a warming ginger beer fizz into herbaceous, almost meaty territory of rosemary and sage before finishing minty and piney. Genuinely unusual, genuinely enjoyable.
The 2026 release shares that lemon backbone but pushes everything further and, crucially, drier. So much drier. There is heather honey, marshmallow, caramelised sugar, and then a wave of pencil shavings and woodiness that speaks to older, more mature stock, some of it perhaps eleven or twelve years old. Anise, fennel, and a green chartreuse herbal quality dance across the finish alongside that familiar pinch of ginger. It is a proper experience, complex and challenging in the best possible way.
Scoring them was genuinely difficult. The newest release is astonishingly dry, rivalling the legendary Kavalan Vinho Barrique, and that alone makes it worth seeking out. Yet the original, sweeter and more welcoming with its enormous finish, just edges ahead for me.
I give the 2026 an eight and the first release an eight and a half. Both are wonderful, and both are exactly what I associate with Ardnamurchan in a heartbeat: complex, interesting, and endlessly rewarding.
So which do you prefer, the crisp, bright original or the daringly dry newcomer? Let me know in the comments.
To see the full side-by-side tasting, check out my YouTube video.
Read the full article at Ardnamurchan Paul Launois: Two Releases, Five Years Apart, Tasted
