Ardnamurchan Paul Launois 2024
Fourth Official Annual Release | 57.3% ABV
What a Difference a Year Makes.
A year ago, almost to the day, we swung our rented motorhome into Morar Silversands campsite. The plot we were allocated faced due west. As we unravelled our camping chairs to take in the view, with volcanic gneiss and pools of shimmering turquoise curving around the pristine white sands, all the way out to the islands of Muck, Eigg and Rum, a seed of thought was planting itself in all of our minds.
That seed would take hold with astounding speed: steering the bus home through Oban we decided that it was time to move from our noisy life in rural Perthshire, and relocate to…somewhere.
We didn’t know yet where, but we knew that it was the right time to do it. For 24 years that we’ve been together, we’ve always said that one day we’d move west, but always found stuff getting in the way. This time though the stuff that would usually jam our path didn’t materialise.
We looked at the Ardnamurchan peninsula, the Isle of Mull, Plockton and various other places, but the school situation always bothered us.
"What about the Isle of Skye?” Mrs Crystal asked. Sure enough there were a multitude of options - local community schools dotted around the island, two primary schools and one high school in Portree, certainly made the decision easier. So long as we lived near Portree we’d be able to have Mini Crystal’s educational needs satisfied. The decision was made. Within two weeks we had sold our house, been to Skye twice to see houses, and set the grinding gears of logistics in motion.
A year, almost, in a heartbeat. Today we made our first voyage to the Isle of Raasay, a place that is a twenty minute drive and a twenty-five minute sail away. Yet it’s taken us a year to visit, but we are currently on our summer holidays and I fancied myself a distillery only hand-fill, if they were offering it. The weather looked decent, so we set off in earnest.
The Sconser to Raasay ferry is brilliant - £4.50 return for foot passengers. The stuff we want to see on Raasay is all a stone’s throw from the port, no car necessary, so on we hopped for the short sail to Raasay. The Hairy Bullet wasn’t too impressed, and spent most of the voyage chewing a metal barrier in protest. As we rounded the channel marker at Sconser and pointed North, the full scope of the eastern edge of the Isle of Skye flowed into view.
It’s biblical. A towering saw’s edge silhouette fades into the layered distance, reminding you that once upon a time dinosaurs walked these lands. Visually arresting, mightily impressive and even a year on, a pinch ourselves sight reminding us that, yes, we can call this place home now.
The Isle of Raasay is home to the Isle of Raasay Distillery, the place that won Tourism Destination of the Year 2023 and, without doubt, you can see why. Alighting at the port on Raasay we about-faced to stand witness to sheets of rain cascading through the mountainous vista of Skye. A view to drink in as much as you can before it seamlessly transitions to dappled sunlight tracing its glowing path across the heather. The weather here moves very fast.
Raasay is a beautiful island, and so peaceful. Everywhere we walked it was quiet. The sound of the lapping waves and wind is the only soundtrack to our meandering. Unlike many of the dithering tourists currently plaguing progress in their pursuit of an instahoot photograph of the Jurassic islands, we are able to come here anytime we like without much issue. It is, surprisingly, my local distillery, going by distance.
A privilege not lost on us as we catch glimpses of the view towards Skye through lush green bushes and trees - Raasay has a lot of trees. The distillery has a fantastic view, elevated and clear of obstruction, I can only imagine the sunsets from this vantage point. We spent a few desperate moments in the shop before being told of the hand-fill price and leaving far too crestfallen and more angered than I should have been, at yet another place geared towards the summer season of super spenders. I’ll leave that hot potato for another time.
We made for the ferry that was approaching, only to find it was resting for lunchtime. With an extra hour to burn we wandered up to a battery that looks over the port, complete with token cannon, and then went to walk on the rocky beach. A year on from sitting on the fine grain of silversands, we were again thinking about our lives and what we are doing. Have we made the right decision to move our lives to the edge of the world?
It’s not an easy answer. Some things have been utterly wonderful - meeting our neighbours around our area - the place that once was filled with hundreds of crofting families now holds 4 or 5 family crofts with multiple generations occupying sections of the land. Our neighbours have embraced us into their world with warmth and friendship, and I can genuinely say I’ve never felt more settled in a community. I think there will be some fascinating friendships established as we spend the coming years living here.
Where we live is beautiful and quiet and peaceful and healing. When we travel to Inverness or back to the Lowlands to see family, we get more and more edgy when surrounded by more than fifteen people. Cities are very stressful and noise is amplified. Travelling to London for work is tantamount to a walking anxiety attack. Coming home is like an onion peeling itself from the noisy, indifferent coldness of modern life.
Sitting in my wee chair, the sun sets on the hill across from us in a band of vivid orange that almost replicates the Paul Launois in the glass. It’s mesmerising.
But there have been struggles, mostly with concern about the wee person. Has she been fitting in? Does she have pals? Is she doing ok? Have we made her life miserable? Will she find a foundation? Will she look back on this and wonder why we did this to her? Are we masking the reality of her isolation with wet examples of life betterment, like being able to visit Raasay, pizza Fridays from the candle shop, walks on coral beaches and Bonnie the Hairy Bullet?
We think all of these things and more, but then she’ll walk herself up the hill to the neighbour's house, where another wee girl spends her time in quiet solitude, and together they seem to be forming a beautiful bond of friendship that makes Auld Doog’s face turn into a soppy mess of Dad-mosh.
We’d never have allowed such a thing to occur in the lowlands. She’d be run over, approached by a weirdo or kidnapped and sold to the highest bidder in some far-flung spot. Or not. But out here, where the most action locals see is a postie stuffing her van into a ditch and having to be rescued by a tractor, we know that she’ll be ok walking up the hill by herself.
Her confidence has gone through the roof since moving here. She walks to the end of the road to catch the bus to school every morning, by herself. A normal service bus. You’d think that’d be risky, but the bus drivers are all so astonishingly switched on for children’s safety and location that you really have to witness it to understand. Our wee girl is doing things for herself that she’d never be allowed to do before now.
Coming into the winter darkness that caused us a bit of strife last year, we are pretty confident in our position of whether or not we made the right call: it’ll be bumpy for a little more time as we try and get our house sorted for visitors and extra space, but when it finally happens we will be in an almost dreamland situation. If only we had a view of the sea…
Review
Ardnamurchan Paul Launois, 2024 Fourth release, Champagne cask matured, 3,198 bottles, 57.3% ABV
£70 - auction only now
Last year I was laying a bottle of Paul Launois onto the silvery sands of Morar, and watching as the sun set over Rum in a heart-racing blaze of fire. This year I’m laying a bottle of Paul Launois onto the weathered wood of our picnic bench on the island that we call home. I took the 2023 bottle of Paul Launois on our motorhome holiday and enjoyed it at each stop we made, culminating in a life-changing decision made as we watched the rain work its watery way up Loch Linnhe, through misting windscreen at Bunree Campsite.
Last year’s release was bloody lovely, but didn’t blow my socks off. As such, when I was thinking about what would be coming up in the whisky pipeline, the Launois 2024 bottling popped into my mind. Knowing I was heading to Campbeltown and likely coming back with some wares, I decided very early on that I’d give the 2024 bottle a pass this year. I’d not chase it, not look for it or even worry about it when it did arrive. It felt good to release the shackles of FOMO for once, and just appreciate whisky as it comes to me.
Then oor Jackie sent me a link to a bottle of 2024 Launois in Loch Fyne Whiskies, just sitting there. I opened the link, and closed it again. In the wild, without panic or fear, I marvelled at the apparent increase in Ardnamurchan rarity availability these days. The Golden Promise triptych is still kicking around even now - cracking whisky not snapped up for auction fodder. I closed the browser window and got on with my day.
Later that afternoon I was still thinking about it. Ardnamurchan is my jam. Like it or not I am into it, and it’s into me. In copious volumes through gaping facehole. Why wouldn’t I want to try the 2024 release? It’s another marker in the sand of Ardnamurchan’s progress, and another reference point I can use moving forward. So I bought it. £70 passed digitally and I bought it, without frowning or anything.
This is how I imagine whisky buying used to be, before bottles were snapped up in seconds, with anguished cries reverberating the land over as internet signals fail or credit card authentication windows appear. I bought it slowly; how whisky should be bought. But is it any good? I opened it during a podcast recording and the neck pour reminded me once again of why I love Ardnamurchan whisky. But neck pours can lie.
Nose
Zingbusters. Lemon curd. Shortbready digestives. Sparkles - gold bokeh. White pepper. Liquid cedar. Pastry. Citrus cannoli.
Palate
Lemon bon bons. Lemon drops. Biscuits - toffee pops. Rubbery finish. Red light. Fantastic crispness. Toffee popcorn. Fresh orange juice. Lemon cannoli. Chalky sweet. Cauliflower. Celery!
The Dregs
The bottle is now almost down to its last third and, such is the drinkability and magnetism of the bottle. I’ve struggled not to keep going until it’s gone. It feels a bit more robust than last year, but luckily I’ve kept a heel of last year’s Launois to check, and sure enough, it’s slightly richer in many departments. It feels like it has more depth to the flavours present in this year’s release.
The zing is zingier. The honey richness is that wee bit more honeyed. The flavours, very similar in both releases, are slightly more vivid. Again we see consistency of product, despite it being a product of another producer’s product - Paul Launois Champagne must be as consistent as Ardna’s whisky.
I spoke of last year’s bottle forming a memory anchor for our time spent on the west coast. A mechanism to revisit that time in our lives when we fell in love with the west coast all over again. I hoped it would be a way, with each year and each new release, to bring back at least some of those memories, as I sat in the lowlands wishing I was out west. Life, as it so often does, made its move and we find ourselves in a place we always dreamed of. We live, every day, in our dream.
That’s not to say we are in a happy, problem free dreamland - it’s business as usual when it comes to the stresses and strains of work and, even more so now, working remotely is a task. We still have our worries about Mini Crystal and her trajectory through life.
But in terms of the environment within which we operate on a day to day basis, we are here, in the place that captured our hearts every time we visited, and it’s still bizarre to be here. We feel we are on a perpetual holiday. When we go back to work on Monday it’ll feel no different to when we were on holiday. We’ll just have to sit in a room for a bit longer being angry at the lack of professionalism or capability of folk, rather than be outside looking at the world wafting by in peace.
If I stand on the rise behind my house I can see the tip of the Cuillins. Outside our windows we see a rolling landscape of constantly shifting beauty with each passing minute, and a mountainous ridgeline behind me that hints at the jagged alien landforms of the Old Man of Storr, and the Quiraing beyond. I look down at the almost empty bottle of Paul Launois as I take photographs, and it no longer triggers memories of our time spent in the motorhome. It represents a monumental moment in our adult lives.
The whisky inside the bottle is as good as it ever has been, and I think it’s slightly better this year than last. There’s an oiliness to it, a syrupy texture that reinforces the lemon drop sweets that I find in abundance. No effervescence for me, because I seem incapable of sensing that in whisky, but it’s outstanding whisky nonetheless. It has the grip of zingy champagne, the coastal saltiness of Ardnamurchan spirit and all the umami, sweet and sour accoutrement that makes the Paul Launois so popular.
Does it compete with something like the Golden Promise hand-fill that reduced me to a hot mess on the floor? Does it elevate a steady 8/10 to a 9? This is a super duper strain of Ardnamurchan but, despite being fantastic, it’s not quite got the element that grips me so tightly when it comes to the Glenbeg spirit - the sherry element.
I’m not saying it needs to be a sherry bomb, in fact quite the opposite; the redness I find in sherry matured Ardnamurchan compliments that salty maritime character so beautifully that I find it hard to reach past. For those who love the pure bourbon matured Ardnamurchan, I reckon this would breach the 9, if you’re over-excited like I am.
All said and done, I love this whisky. £70 paid. Cask Strength. Limited run. Unique expression. Fun experiment. Released without ceremony or circus. Ardnamurchan at play. It's 8/10 all day. Something Special, to be protected and celebrated. I’m delighted I picked this up, in the end, and didn’t let it pass me by. Where will next year’s bottle find us? To be discovered…
Score: 8/10
Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. DC