Ardmore 1977-2000 Signatory Dumpy Review

Hi everyone,

Another old and rare whisky from Ardmore. I almost tasted this just to make my friend Tom jealous, because he’s a big fan of Ardmore. As actually, am I. Only this year I started to realise the quality this distillery has to offer. Then I kind of had to rave about it because I bought a barrel of the stuff.

So seeing this at the collector’s stand at a very reasonable price, I thought why not. Let’s see what the old stuff was like. Also these old Sigantory’s from the dumpy bottles have a pretty good reputation.

REMEMBER, Ardmore was direct firing their stills back then, with coal.

 

Ardmore 1977 Signatory Dumpy 58.1%

Colour: Gold

Body: Medium/Full

Nose: Different to the modern stuff as so much of the 1970’s stuff is. Not much peat, spicy, floral, a little soap, ginger, white pepper, malt, a little ash, porridge, chalky, quite austere though.

Taste: Intense, great arrival on lemon juice, oily, then classic Ardmorian buttery peat and smoke, hot ash, malt, oak, chalky, porridge, white pepper and great oily white truffle.

Finish: Medium/Long length. Oily, buttery, dry oak, austere, some black pepper. A little fizzy at the very end.

Bottled 2000, at 23yo. With water it loses the nose, and the taste is more fresh fruit with green apple. The white truffle note is very cool and unique, haven’t found that on anything else. The equal of the G&M Talisker I just reviewed.

84/100

Thanks for reading!

Scotch Review #536

Whisky Network Review #631

Network Average: 74.5

Best Score: 92

Worst Score: 22

0-49 Terrible

50-59 Bad

60-64 Just About OK

65-69 Ok to Good

70-74 Good

75-79 Very Good

80-84 Excellent

85-89 Superb

90+ Magnificent

Full Disclosure Disclaimer: I currently work as a Brand Ambassador for Penderyn Distillery. The views expressed here are purely my own and do not reflect the views of Penderyn Distillery or The Welsh Whisky Company. I try to maintain as much objectivity as I can but feel free to take my reviews with as big a pinch of salt as you like. Furthermore, my rating scale is NOT based on a Parker type wine scoring scale or a school/college/university % or A-F grade score. You can find more on my scoring here. I apologise for any seemly low or 'bad' scores given with my system and am sorry I can't say only nice things. Please keep in mind that I am ethically compromised and am unable to produce 100% unbiased reviews.

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