Whisky Review: Ardbeg An Oa

For most of the 2000s Ardbeg had a static standard lineup composed of the 10 Year, Uigeadail, and Corryvreckan. With their near neighbor Laphroaig throwing off new NAS releases with unusual rapidity, Ardbeg seemed almost staid in comparison with the only variation coming from their annual one-offs. But more recently it seems that they've been paying attention to Laphroaig's strategy, most notably with their Select release that took something of a kitchen sink approach and prominently featured new American oak casks in the mix.

Ardbeg decided to copy that strategy with An Oa, which is composed from first-fill ex-bourbon, PX sherry, and new American oak casks that are blended together in a French oak vat. The final result is bottled at 46.6% without coloring or chill filtration.

Ardbeg An Oa

Nose: young-ish Ardbeg peat, balanced herbal and smoky, a little charcoal, clean malt and a whiff of sweet sherry in the background, some new American oak, vanilla. After adding a few drops of water it becomes softer and the sherry notes integrate with the peat and the oak becomes more savory.

Taste: strong bourbon cask and malt sweetness up front, new American oak in the middle and a touch of sherry in the background, slowly fading into drier oak at the back. After dilution the sweetness and oak become more balanced, but the peat at the back is significantly reduced.

Finish: dry peat smoke, fading into balanced malt and sherry, a lingering weed-y aftertaste

This is pretty OK. The grab bag approach has its downsides, especially in the new oak influence, but this is a decent addition to their standard lineup. If you're looking for a sherry-influenced Ardbeg this doesn't provide anywhere near the experience of Uigeadail, but it's also a lot cheaper. I can also see this appealing to fans of Laphroaig Quarter Cask as the oak-driven character has some similarities. In the places where An Oa is at an equal price to the 10 Year, I think it would be a bit of a toss-up between the two depending on your taste, but around here where it's $12 more, the less fancy pick is the right one.

Whisky Review: Ardbeg Corryvreckan vs. Ardbeg Corryvreckan

Until the release of An Oa, Corryvrecken was the most recent addition to Ardbeg's core lineup of primarily NAS releases. It nominally replaced the vintage dated Airigh Nam Beist and was built on the model of Uigeadail, with a core of younger bourbon cask malt inflected with a speciality cask, in this case French oak rather than sherry.

This whisky is aged in a combination of American and French oak casks for an indeterminate amount of time, then bottled at 57.1% without coloring or chill filtration.

Ardbeg Corryvreckan L13

Nose: dry Ardbeg smoke, fresh malt, vanilla, thick American oak, fresh cedar, background French oak, a little floral. After adding a splash of water it becomes softer with more balanced peat and oak, plus a little tar and berries.

Taste: moderate malt and cask sweetness up front, quickly trumped by a thick layer of oak tannins with a raisin-y quality and sharp smoke in the background. After dilution it becomes much sweeter, with the oak and peat pushed towards the background, joined by berry overtones in the middle.

Finish: oak tannins, cedar, dry peat, woody sweetness

This reads like the Ardbeg take on Laphroaig Quarter Cask. There's smoke and oak and not much else. Quite a contrast to the more complex French oak cask that I tried at the distillery, this is mostly young American oak with the fresh lumber quality that I have found in so many other younger Islay whiskies lately. Proofed down a bit it reads fairly similarly to the standard Ardbeg 10 Year, albeit with more oak. That's not to say this is bad, but I don't see that it's worth the premium over Uigeadail. If I'm going to pay this kind of money for a young product it will be to support smaller players like Kilchoman.

Ardbeg Corryvreckan (Sample)

Nose: strong but not overwhelming mossy/smokey Ardbeg peat, smoked fish in the background,  creamy malt, lots of vanilla getting floral around the edges, American oak verging into sherry, berries. After adding a few drops of water the smoke and oak integrate and soften, edging out the other aromas.

Taste: lots of oak-y sweetness up front, berries and dried fruit appear in the middle with dried chilies without a lot of heat in the background, a very creamy mouthfeel without a lot of malt flavor, becoming more tannic and joined by dry Ardbeg peat at the back with fairly strong heat. After dilution it becomes softer and sweeter up front, but the oak tannins at the back are amplified and it loses much of its complexity.

Finish: lots of alcohol heat, juicy oak, cedar, creosote, savory peat residue, dried fruit

While there are some differences, this is fairly consistent with the L13 bottle I tried above, though the flavors are more dynamic and nuanced here. Much like the L18 Uigeadial, the nose is better than the palate, but they're a little closer to being in balance. There is significant oak influence, but it continues to read primarily as American rather than French oak. Overall I could see myself drinking more, but this doesn't change my feeling that its quality doesn't justify its cost. Unfortunately as long as enough consumers disagree, I don't think we'll see any change.

Whisky Review: Ardbeg Uigeadail Revisited (Twice)

Uigeadail has been one of Ardbeg's mainstays since it was introduced in 2003. Combining bourbon cask whisky with sherry casks whisky, it sought to incorporate the two characters without losing the distillery's trademark peat smoke.

While the initial batches were produced using sherry casks from the 70s, these inevitably ran low and were allocated for more expensive releases. Since then it has become increasingly clear that most or all of the spirit going into the mix is relatively young - when I went to the Deconstructing the Dram tasting at the distillery in 2013 we were giving a sample from a six year old sherry cask as a representative component. This has raised questions about the quality and value of the expression now compared to when it was first released. Since I first tried Uigeadail from a miniature I've thought it is as relatively simple but still fairly good. So I wanted to give it another go to see where it stands today.

As with all Uigeadail, the whisky is aged in a mix of ex-bourbon and ex-sherry casks, then bottled at 54.2% without coloring or chill filtration.

Ardbeg Uigeadail (Unknown bottling date)

Nose: a little thin, moderate Ardbeg peat, background oak, a layer sherry, vanilla, cacao nibs, a touch of something floral. After adding a splash of water it becomes softer and flatter with more bourbon than sherry cask character.

Taste: rather hot throughout - malt and sherry sweetness up front, mild peat, vanilla, and oak near the back, a little flat. After dilution it becomes noticeably sweeter up front, but flatter and less overtly peated at the back.

Finish: hot, light oak and peat, sherry residue

Wow, what a letdown. Compared to the miniature I tried in 2013, this comes off as thin and hot, without the depth of flavor I found before. There are some nice touches in the aromas, but they were difficult to find behind all of the hot alcohol. It feels like a bad batch made when they were running low on quality casks, whether sherry or bourbon. There's just not much going on here, definitely nothing that would make me want a whole bottle.

Not my finest photography, but that's
what happens in a poorly lit bar

Just to check if this was simply a bad sample, I also had a pour from a freshly opened bottle at the Highland Stillhouse. So hopefully this is more representative of what you'd be getting at the moment.

Ardbeg Uigeadail (L18)

Nose: thick sherry, a respectable level of smoky Ardbeg peat, cured meat, juicy raisins and berries, vanilla, herbal, cinnamon, roasted malt. After adding a few drops of water the sherry retreats to reveal more peat and it becomes saltier.

Taste: thick, sweet sherry throughout, hot but not overwhelmingly so, peat doesn't really come in until the finish. After dilution the malt shows up behind the sherry and the peat comes in earlier.

Finish: peat arrives, sherry residue, licorice, mild oak

Well, this is quite a bit more like it. While the flavors were a bit of a letdown, the nose had pretty much everything I would have expected at this point. Hits all of the sherry cask and Ardbeg notes with solid intensity. With that said, I still can't see myself paying more for this than for any other NAS sherry monster. There's just not enough complexity to justify a higher price point.

Whisky Review: Ardbeg Supernova 'Stellar' Release (2009)

This was the return salvo from Ardbeg in the peat wars that had been touched off by Bruichladdich's Octomore. The malt for this release contained roughly twice as much phenol (100 ppm vs. 50 ppm) as their normal spec, though it never reached the stratospheric heights that Octomore has explored.

This release was bottled at a hefty 58.9%, presumably without coloring or chill filtration as is now standard at Ardbeg.

Thanks to Ian of PDXWhisky for letting me kill his bottle.

Ardbeg Supernova (2009)

Nose: classic Ardbeg peat with clean malt and a touch of salt underneath, fresh grass and wildflowers, damp wool, seed/nut/olive oils, very gentle oak, bourbon cask berry/fruit notes, hints of cured meat, charred wood. After adding a few drops of water, the peat settles down a bit and integrates with the malt, though it seems a bit younger overall,

Taste: big malt and wood sweetness explodes up front and fades slowly across the palate, a thick layer of oily/dirty peat is not far behind, though the alcohol heat muddles things around the middle, becoming earthier/muddier further back where it is joined by a moderate dose of oak tannins. After dilution, the peat and malt are more in balance and are joined by more aggressive wood, stronger bourbon cask fruit, and some anise top notes, with used coffee grounds showing up at the back, giving a rather different evolution,

Finish: earthy peat, clean malt, lingering alcohol, gentle bourbon cask influence,

As would be expected, the peat is front and center here, even more so than in Ardbeg's other, admittedly rather peaty, releases. At the same time, it doesn't completely overwhelm the malt or cask influence, which keeps it from being unidimensional. Overall I'd say this works better than the Octomore 01.1 I tried, due to the greater cask influence and more enjoyable peat character.

With that said, I don't like this enough to pay the crazy money that even the more recent release of Supernova is going for. It's worth a try, but not at $200, which seems to be the low end by now. I'll probably stick to something more affordable like Corryvrecken, which is plenty peaty.

Whisky Review: Ardbeg 10 Year L7

One of the biggest debates among Ardbeg fans in recent years is whether the whisky has fundamentally changed since Glenmorangie purchased and refurbished the distillery in the late-90s.

Their reputation was rebuilt largely on whiskies that were much older than the numbers on the labels because of gaps in production that I've discussed before. The switchover came in 2008, when they released Renaissance, which was purportedly the first ten year old spirit distilled after Glenmorangie bought the distillery. This corresponds with L8 releases of the standard 10 Year, which began to utilize the same spirit, rather than the "Old Ten" L0-L7 releases which were exclusively spirit distilled before 1997.

This whisky was bottled on November 19th, 2007 at 46% without coloring or chill filtration. Thanks to Michael Kravitz for the sample of this now long-gone whisky.

Ardbeg 10 Year L7 323 21:19 4ml

Nose: rather green, light herbal peat, graphite, seaweed/seashore, a touch of decaying vegetation, clean malt, solid bourbon cask influence, fresh oak, overripe berries, rubber cement, burnt orange peel, gingerbread/baking spices, a touch of ham. After adding a few drops of water, it becomes more Highland-ish with increasing floral character and slightly diminished peat, which becomes more smokey and charcoal-like, losing some of the vegetal character.

Taste: sweet malt and barrel notes up front, bourbon cask fruit esters and heather on top, balanced by oak tannins, ink, graphite, and leafy peat smoke in the middle, which fades a bit at the back for another bump of malt sweetness. After dilution, the peat integrates and subsides a bit, letting the sweetness and bourbon cask character shine plus revealing some citrus peel (mostly orange with a bit of lemon), and there's a fruit-y thickness around the middle that makes it seem almost sherried.

Finish: sweet malt, browned apples, herbal/leafy peat, gentle oak,

I don't know that this version of the 10 Year is better than more recent releases, but it is noticeably different. I tried the last of the bottle of 10 Year I purchased in late 2012, which was likely an L11 or L12, side by side and found it to be more aggressive, both in terms of sweetness and smoke, with a lot of barrel char plus some iodine and oily character. In terms of similarities, I found strong gingerbread notes in both, which was a nice touch and reminded me of younger bourbon cask Kilkerran. So there is definitely overlap between the pre- and post-Glenmorangie spirit, and they appear to be the same color even without caramel, but they are also distinctly different from each other. In many ways this reminds me of Bruichladdich (whose former owner, Mark Reynier, coincidentally considered buying Ardbeg), which has also dealt with the changing nature of the spirit distilled before and after the distillery was rebuilt.

L12 on the left - L7 on the right

For me the biggest lesson from this tasting was getting a better sense of how older Ardbeg can evolve out of the younger stock. While most of the spirit is probably from the mid-90s, I suspect that this release still has some older casks in the mix, so it has more of the lighter aged character that comes from well-aged refill casks; the L7 had some overlap with the 1994 and 1974 single casks I tried during the Deconstructing the Dram tasting I did at Ardbeg. So if Ardbeg ever releases older age dated whisky I think it could be very good, in contrast to the much younger and more raw style we primarily get these days.

Whisky Review: Ardbeg Ardbog

The march of Ardbeg special releases continued in 2013 with Ardbog - named obviously for the numerous peat bogs on Islay. It was composed of a mix of ex-bourbon and ex-manzanilla sherry cask whisky, with no age statement (guesses place it around 10 years and I would tend to agree). It was bottled at a batch strength of 52.1% (kind of low for 10 year old whisky, so there may have been some older casks that were rapidly losing strength).

Thanks to MAO for a sample of this whisky.

Ardbeg Ardbog

Nose: moderate Ardbeg peat, rather woody, moderate sherry influence/raisins and brine, savory caramel, maple syrup, apple blossom, bourbon cask fruit esters. After adding a few drops of water, it becomes more savory but noticeably thinner, with cured meat popping out, while the peat becomes drier and less assertive, the sherry tucks into the general savoriness except for a few fruity overtones, and everything integrates into the wood.

Taste: begins somewhat muddled, then resolves into woody sweetness, which becomes more peppery/tannic with hints of sherry smoothness further back, slipping into a small puddle of peat at the end. After dilution, it becomes more robustly sweet up front with the sherry adding some of its own sweetness to the mix, though the wood also becomes more assertive, with an odd interlude of more savory sherry overtones near the back, before sliding into very mild dry mossy peat

Finish: young wood oak tannins, dry mossy peat around the edges, black pepper, bittersweet overall,

The manzanilla sherry influence is much more noticeable on the nose than the palate. It makes for something of an interesting twist on the normal Ardbeg profile, but I felt like some of the distillery character (especially the peat) had faded too much. The palate felt flat, with the wood overtaking most of the experience. Overall, I felt like the casks were a bit too active, like the whisky had been pulled out because it was about to go over the edge into oak juice.

When it comes right down to it, I have yet to try one of the recent Ardbeg special releases that seemed like they even matched up to current batches of Uigeadail or Corryvrecken. I'm all for experimentation, but charging at least 50% more for worse whisky doesn't do it for me. While this is better than Galileo, that's not saying much. I'm not sad that I gave it a miss when bottles were still available in Oregon.

Whisky Review: Ardbeg Galileo

Every year on Ardbeg Day, June 2nd, since 2012, Ardbeg has released a special bottle as part of the festivities, following on the heels of their previous Committee bottlings. This was to extend Ardbeg's Open Day, as part of the Fèis Ìle festival, worldwide. Galileo was released in 2012 as a second limited edition whisky alongside the eponymous Day.

This whisky is composed of 1999 vintage casks that used to contain either bourbon or sweet marsala. It was bottled at a decent, but not too hefty, 49% ABV.

Thanks to Michael Kravitz for the sample.

Ardbeg Galileo

Nose: cheap apple juice, dry peat dust, round wine notes, mixed vegetables, dry malt, vanilla, bourbon cask caramel, floral/ester-y, berries. After adding a few drops of water, there is a shift towards the lighter floral/ester/vanilla notes, with a decrease in peat and wine, and a bit of chocolate comes out.

Taste: apple up front, sweet cream of wheat dominates throughout, very mild wine cask notes (growing a bit with time), peat barely makes itself known, a fair amount of alcohol heat, and oak tannins - the combination of which seems to hit me the wrong way. After dilution, the sweetness is significantly ramped up, the ex-bourbon casks make themselves known at the beginning and end, and the marsala gets a bump in the middle, while the peat fades almost to oblivion.

Finish: creamy grain sweetness, a bit of marsala, a touch of peat

Overall, this feels like Bill Lumsden poked around through Ardbeg's warehouses, found a number of casks that had aged just to the point where the new make notes had faded, slapped them in ex-marsala casks for a bit, then called it good. While not precisely bad (though the finish is kind of off-putting), there's nothing inspiring about this whisky that makes me think it deserves to be a special release with the associated price tag. No wonder there are still so many bottles left on shelves.

Unlike Ardbeg Day and even Ardbog, there seems to be little to this one other than a hyped-up story. What do marsala casks have to do with space? If the idea was to commemorate the aging process, why not keep it simple and do a 100% ex-bourbon release, some sort of hyper-10 Year? I'm guessing whatever wood got sent up wasn't some kind of fancy wine finish, so why go that route other than force of habit?

I think everyone would be a lot happier if they just went through the warehouse, pulled out some nicer casks, and put them together. No need to get fancy, just deliver something demonstrably better than Uigeadail.

Scotland 2013: Ardbeg Deconstructing the Dram Tasting

Following my tour of the distillery, I got to sample some of the single cask whiskies that go into making Ardbeg's core range.

As I've talked about previously, Ardbeg doesn't have particularly deep stocks in their warehouses due to the distillery essentially being shuttered for much of the 1980s and 1990s. So they have largely been focusing on how to do more with what they have, which is almost all pretty young spirit.

First up, we sampled the whiskies that go into the standard 10 Year.

10 Year Old First-Fill Bourbon - 58.1%

Nose: dry smokey/medicinal peat, fruity, bourbon barrel (caramel, vanilla, oak), some baking spices

Taste: very rich bourbon notes, baking spices, pepper, peat at the back, fruity, vanilla, heavy astringent oak

This was about what I expected it to be. The traditional Ardbeg character was present alongside a fair amount of barrel. Not particularly complex, but good drinking. I'd be happy to buy some at the right price.

18 Year Old Refill Bourbon - 54.3%

Nose: very minty, green, bubblegum, bready

Taste: very sweet up front, more oak and less peat than the first-fill, minty at the back, green and earthy

This was quite a surprise. Despite being a refill cask, with presumably less to give to the spirit, this actually had more barrel influence than the first-fill. While less recognizably Ardbeg, it offered more complexity. If the sweetness was just turned down a bit, this would be a fantastic single cask. Just goes to show how much the distillery character is a product of the master blender rather than the casks coming out as a uniform product on their own.

Next up we had some younger sherry casks destined for Uigeadail.

6 Year Old First-Fill Sherry - 57.8%

Nose: sherry overwhelms everything else - stewed fruit, deep oak, baking spices, a hint of peat and salt

Taste: big bittersweet sherry up front, lots of oak, just a bit of peat at the back, lots of pepper

Whelp, that certainly confirms my suspicions. This was almost unrecognizable as coming from Ardbeg, reminding me far more of sherry bombs like Aberlour A'Bunadh or Macallan Cask Strength. No wonder Uigeadail doesn't have a lot of nuance - Ardbeg is pushing their casks to extract the maximum amount of sherry flavor from them in the least amount of time, then blending it back with bourbon casks to get back some of the smoke. Which, in my opinion, makes the continued high prices on Uigeadail (with a couple notable exceptions) shameful. This is not the whisky that people were willing to pony up extra dollars for in the early 2000s. It's good whisky, but it's not worth big bucks anymore - treat it like any other younger cask strength whisky on the market today.

Last, we got to try the whisky going into Corryvrecken.

8 Year Old First-Fill French Oak - 57.5%

Nose: noticeable French oak influence, spicy, incense, floral

Taste: lots of caramel, vanilla, light tannins, French oak, cinnamon, allspice, light peat

This was my favorite of the bunch. The French oak played very well with Ardbeg's spirit, adding new layers on top of the standard first-fill bourbon notes. Additionally, this is almost exactly what you can expect to find in Corryvreckan itself, so I will definitely be picking up a bottle. With that said, it's also reasonable to expect that the spirit itself is relatively young, so I don't think it's worth the $80-100 that I see some places charging. $70 seems more reasonable.

Last, but definitely not least, we were led back into the Kiln to taste some very rare Ardbeg.

28 Year 1974/2002 - 40.1%

Nose: like sticking your face in a florist's shop, lots of apples, incense, light oak, just a touch of peat, green, cinnamon, grapes, savory

Taste: sweet, floral, tons of vanilla, apples, malty, very light oak, caramel, chocolate, French oak-y

A cask that just missed losing its designation as whisky to the angels. This one just blew my mind. I finally understand the hype about 1970s Ardbeg. This is completely different than anything else I've ever tried from them. It read much more like a lightly peated Highland or Speysider. To cap the experience, I could still smell the residue in my tasting glass two weeks later after I had gotten back home. I doubt I'll be able to try anything like it again, so I consider it quite a privilege to have gotten the one taste. If you get a chance to go to the distillery, do a tasting, if only for this.

Overall I found this to be a really informative tasting. While significantly more expensive than the tasting at Lagavulin (£45 vs. £15), it still felt like reasonable value for money. We were also given samples of the finished 10 Year, Uigeadail, and Corryvreckan, but I mostly passed because I had a) tried most of them before and b) was afeared for the state of my liver after so much alcohol in a single day. It was a slowly, slightly wobbly ride back to Port Ellen, but I got there in one piece.

Scotland 2013: Lagavulin and Ardbeg Distillery Tours

It was a slightly damp morning when I got up. After wolfing down breakfast, I hopped on my bike and zipped down the road towards my 10:30 appointment at Lagavulin, aided by the stiff west wind at my back. I made there with a few minutes to spare and eventually found a railing where I could lock up my bike. I turned out that I was going to get a nearly private tour, as only two more people were scheduled and they barely arrived in time. Sadly I was told that pictures wouldn't be allowed inside the distillery - a policy that varied widely from place to place and never seemed to have coherent rationals.

Delivering malt to the distillery

Justina took us into the old malt barn, which now serves as storage space for the distillery. Lagavulin did its own malting up until the 1970s, but now gets malt exclusively from Port Ellen at 38 PPM spec. They consume on average 125 tons of malt per week, less than half of what their sister distillery Caol Ila uses. We learned that the Port Ellen malt process takes 2-3 days vs. 9-10 when done by hand. The mechanical malting process involved smoking the barley with peat for ~16 hours, then the malt is checked for phenol content and separated out for their various customers - this suggests that there is a significant amount of variability, even in what is supposed to be an industrial process. Some comes out with a high enough phenol content to satisfy Ardbeg (55 PPM), while some is low enough for Bowmore (25 PPM) - Port Ellen doesn't actually use different processes for the different malts they sell to the various distilleries.

Lagavulin's water source is so peaty that it's brown by the time it gets to the distillery

Lagavulin uses a single large (21,000 L) mash tun, which they can charge four times at day when running full tilt. The larch washbacks are roughly the same size, which are rotated roughly every five hours to give them a bit of time to clean things out before the next mash is cycled in. Their fermentation is fairly standard - commercial yeast, 55 hour fermentation ending around 8% ABV. Given that much of Lagavulin's process up to this point appears to be relatively 'standard', I'm going to chalk a lot of its unique character up to its stills (one of the few pictures I was able to get of the inside of the distillery).

Lagavulin has two pairs of wash and spirit stills, which are built such that they will largely concentrate the constituents of the wash rather than separating them, like many other stills. They are short, squat, and bulbous, with steeply descending lyne arms. Lagavulin also loads their stills nearly to capacity and uses a fairly short foreshots cut (72-70%) - this is also a much lower maximum proof due to the lack of reflux - with a fairly broad spirit cut (70-62%) that dips down into what many other distilleries would consider feints. These features and procedures mean that there is very little reflux or copper contact during distillation, which produces a spirit that has significant amount of both foreshots (fruity esters) and feints (phenols, fusel oils). This gives Lagavulin a significant depth and breadth of character, but also usually requires that it be aged for a fairly long time to really hit its stride, since the esters and fusel oils need time and oxygen to covert into more pleasantly flavored compounds.

The docks that used to service the distillery before roll-on ferry service became available

Lagavulin is one of the few large distilleries with sufficiently large demand for their single malt whiskies that very little of their output goes into blends - 95/5 seems to be the split I see quoted most often. As an interesting side-note, Justina mentioned that production at Lagavulin had ramped up during the late 90s, which means that stock should be hitting the right age for their standard 16 year old whisky now or in the near future. Perhaps part of the reason why Diageo has decided to hold down prices on an in-demand bottle? Though it doesn't explain the sky-high prices of the cask strength 12 year old and PX-finished Distillers Edition 'special releases' that they put out every year.

After the tour wrapped up, I trooped down to one of Lagavulin's warehouses for a very special tasting. That will be a post of its own, but suffice it to say that it was an experience.

Somewhat tipsy after half a dozen cask strength drams (I repeatedly told people that part of the reason I was biking was that that way I was only a threat to myself), I set off further down the road towards Ardbeg, the last of the Kildalton distilleries on my itinerary.

Ardbeg's pagodas peeked out from the gently rolling hills, opening up to another pretty bay, which gave the distillery its name (Ardbeg means 'small promontory'). The distillery is a maze of buildings, all put up at different phases of its life.

The first order of business was getting some food into myself. Thankfully Ardbeg has a nice cafe inside their visitor center, which was rebuilt from one of their old malting kilns. After a pleasant lunch and a chat with a local couple who used to live in the PNW, I set off with a small group for our tour of the distillery.

Neil led us into what used to be one of Ardbeg's malt bins, which are now no long used. We began with a bit of history, describing the ups and downs in the distillery's fortunes. We spent some time discussing recent history - the rescue of the distillery from outright ruin in 1997 when Glenmorangie purchased it and the changes wrought since Glenmorangie was brought into the LVMH fold in 2004. From there we walked through the old malt bins.

After talking about the difficulties and near tragedies of working in the old kilns and malt bins, Neil made was I thought was the most incisive point of the whole tour - that "there are no stories" attached to the newer, more efficient equipment. Old methods were significantly more labor intensive and produced much more batch variation - for instance, peating used to be assessed 'organoleptically', i.e. by tasting the malt to decide when it was done - but the new equipment has largely removed the human element from the production process. Malt is now purchased at spec (55 PPM) from Port Ellen, delivered to the malt bins by truck, then fed into the mill and mashed automatically. Speaking of their mash tun, Ardbeg is in the peculiar situation of having left their old cast iron mash tun in place, then inserted a new stainless steel one inside it.

This bothered me a little bit - if you're going to upgrade to stainless steel, then just do it, don't try to hide behind the old façade - but ultimately it's a quibble. However, one nice feature of the new mash tun is that it automatically cleans itself - distillery workers no longer have to climbing inside to wash it out by hand.

Ardbeg does keep one piece of tradition by using wooden washbacks. These are about the same size as Lagavulin's at 23,500 liters. Fermentation has become shorter by about ten hours since the early 2000s, coming down to a more 'standard' 55 hours with a strength of 8% ABV. I do have to wonder if this change has been part of why Ardbeg's spirit has become less complex - there's less time for the yeast to develop flavors, instead focusing on converting the starch into alcohol, which will produce fewer interesting side-products during fermentation. Each washback holds enough wort for two wash still charges - half is taken out, then the second half is removed five hours later after the first wash still run.

The view out of the room where the washbacks are located is rather nice

Ardbeg has some rather peculiar stills. To begin with they only have a single pair of stills - one wash still and one spirit still. Second, they are very short stills - shorter even than Laphroaig's tiny spirit stills - which should reduce copper contact. With that said, they still have plenty of capacity - the wash still is 18,770 liters and the spirit still is 16,957 liters. The spirit still actually has more capacity than any other spirit still on the island, with the exception of Caol Ila's monsters. The stills are fairly highly charged - the wash still is filled to 64% and the spirit still to 81%, which should reduce copper contact. However, the stills both have a lamp glass shape and slightly rising lyne arms, which will increase reflux, though this is balanced by the fact that they still have fairly wide necks. To add to this, the spirit still has a purifier - basically a piece of copper pipe that connects the lyne arm back to the pot of the still. What this does is return heavier vapor and anything that condenses in the lyne arm back to the pot for redistillation, effectively increasing reflux. All of this is a peculiar mix, which goes a way towards explaining the particular qualities of Ardbeg's whisky - despite very high peating levels, it isn't necessarily more smoky than Laphroaig or even Lagavulin, with a lot lighter esters and an oily character.

Ardbeg, as with most distilleries, proofs their new make spirit down to 63.5% and fills most of it into first and second-fill ex-bourbon casks. Smaller amounts are filled into sherry casks and French oak casks, for their Uigeadail and Coryvrecken expressions. Displaying the influence of Glenmorangie's Bill Lumsden, a variety of other casks, such as marsala, fino sherry, and French wine casks are also used.

French wine casks with their distinctive hoops in the foreground left and stacked up in the middle right

One example up close

After discussing casks, we went into one of the warehouses for the 'Deconstructing the Dram' tasting. As with the Lagavulin tasting, that will have to be its own post.

Once again fairly tipsy, I departed from Ardbeg. I briefly considered continuing down the road to view the Kildalton Cross, but thought better of it, given that it had been a long day and the wind was still blowing rather hard out of the west. That made for a slow trip back to Port Ellen, but I got there without too much trouble. I made a fairly early night of it, knowing that I had to get most of the way around Loch Indaal the next day.

The Future of Ardbeg - or What is in Their Warehouse?

This week seems to have turned into Ardbeg week, with reviews of the 10 Year and Uigeadail expressions following on the heels of Ardbeg Day last weekend.

© K&L Spirits Journal Blog

The fundamental question I got out of those reviews is "what does Ardbeg have in their warehouses these days?" When the distillery was purchased in 1997, it took roughly another year to rebuild it to the point where it could operate at full capacity again. By then, most of the stocks were either from before 1983, when the distillery was shuttered for six years, or from 1990 onward, though not much of it. So the first release was a 17 year old, which drew from stocks produced in the early 1980s. However, that only continued until 2004, when they hit the hole in their stocks. A stop-gap was created, in the form of Airigh Nam Beist, a 1990 vintage dated whisky (there were three bottles released in 2006-2008, which varied from 16-18 years old) made from stocks produced right after production restarted. There was also a one-off 25 year old Lord of the Isles release in 2007, composed from a vatting of whisky distilled in 1974-1976, but it was phenomenally expensive and very limited.

Throughout this period, the only other age dated whisky in Ardbeg's stable was the 10 year old. This has been put out consistently since 1999. However, by doing some math, it's not hard to see that a lot of much older whisky from the pre-1983 period must have gone in, because 10 year old stocks from the post-1989 period were extremely limited. This meant that the 10 YO bottles were often spectacular, because so much old stock was being added to pad them out. However, it was clear that this situation wouldn't last forever. Distillation began again in 1998 and Ardbeg started releasing yearly bottles as their stock aged, beginning with Very Young (For Discussion) in 2003, followed by Very Young (2004), Still Young (2006), Almost There (2007), and finally Renaissance (2008), which was the first 10 year old whisky distilled under Glenmorangie's ownership. This was a watershed moment, because it meant that Ardbeg finally had enough stock to keep their product pipeline full. However, it also meant significant changes in flavor, both because the distillery was no longer packing their 'younger' and cheaper bottles with old stock and because distilling practices had changed. This is clear both in the tasting notes made by those following Ardbeg's evolution.

As I noted at the beginning, all of this begs the question of what's left in Ardbeg's warehouses. One of
the eternal dilemmas for any distiller is how much whisky to sell now and how much to save for later. Because of the 1980s hole in their stocks and the lower production volumes during most of the 90s, Ardbeg had to cannibalize its older stocks just to keep putting out its basic expressions during the early years of Glenmorangie ownership. For instance, all of the Airigh Nam Beist expressions were from a single year, 1990. Why didn't Ardbeg continue the series by releasing whiskies from 1991-1996 as they aged? Was all of the stock consumed in putting out the 10 Year bottles? If they still had much stock from the 1990s, a lot of it could now be bottled as 18+ years old, which could be sold for a mint. But pretty much all of the old stuff bottled by Ardbeg has been from the mid- to late-70s.

Bordeaux Casks © Whisky-News

Instead, when special releases have been put out since 2008, they have pretty much all been NAS. I've talked about this a bit before and it's now clear that Ardbeg is trying to conserve the older whisky that it does have on hand, rather than using it to enhance their NAS releases. When Ardbeg does let us know what's inside, it's all 9-12 years old, usually with some kind of cask finish. This seems to highlight the influence of Glenmorangie's Bill Lumsden, who is a big proponent of complex wood management to produce new flavors in whisky. The obsession is, as noted by Oliver Klimek, a fairly new trend that may be a way to deal with the fact that modern techniques for fermenting and distilling have made the whisky coming off the stills less flavorful, making it necessary for the spirit to get more from the casks. In Ardbeg's case, this may be a combination of their lack of supply (there's only so much flavor you can get into a whisky in under a dozen years) and the change in distilling practices since Glenmorangie took ownership (in addition to older changes like the loss of on-site maltings). Given the huge variety of casks used in special edition Ardbeg's of the last few years (alligator char casks, marsala, French oak, etc.), it's clear that this has been a focus for the new management in dealing with their supply issues. But it also feels a bit like throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping something sticks.

All of this is to say, don't expect anything old out of Ardbeg any time soon. Bill Lumsden has categorically stated on the K&L Spirits Journal podcast that he will not be rereleasing the 17 Year, despite demand, both because he doesn't think he can recreate the late-70s/early-80s style of whisky that went into those bottles and because they simply don't have the stocks of 1990s whisky to do it. It's possible that age dated whiskies older than the 10 Year will come on-line again, since the whisky created under Glenmorangie ownership is now potentially 15 years old, but I wouldn't count on it. Ardbeg's customers seem more or less happy to pay good money for younger whisky with no age statement, so I expect that they will ride this out unless sales start to slip. Which is certainly a risk given the changes that they are going through. Their reputation in the new millennium was built on selling older whisky at young whisky prices, but now the situation is reversed. Will their reputation be able to withstand the lack of anything really mature in their pipeline? Will the new style whisky age as gracefully as that made before Glenmorangie took over? All unknowable right now. As they say, only time will tell.

Whisky Review: Ardbeg Uigeadail - or Really Don't Believe the Hype

This review follows on the heels of Ardbeg 10 Year, as the gift pack I picked up also contained a mini of Uigeadail.

I've talked a bit before about Ardbeg's radical shift towards no age statement (NAS) whiskies and Uigeadail was what got the ball rolling. Ardbeg was shuttered for most of the 1980s and all but closed during the 1990s, leaving a large hole in the distillery's stocks after it was purchased and refurbished by Glenmorangie and their parent company LVMH. Uigeadail, named after the loch that supplies most of the distillery's water, was originally put together to utilize a number of ex-sherry casks that were distilled in the 1970s. To balance them out, younger, peatier (peat flavors tend to decrease over time) ex-bourbon cask whisky was blended in to make an expression that combined the mellow sweetness of sherry with the fiery peat of the younger malt. No age statement was added because it was felt that labeling the whisky with the age of the youngest component wouldn't do justice to the old sherry casks added in. First released in 2003, it was an almost instant hit.

However, there was always a limitation to this plan - the finite supply of old sherry casks. While I was never able to sample older bottles, talking to a number of friends who have been drinking it for some time and reading reviews suggests that there has been a significant decrease in quality of Uigeadail releases over the last few years. This tends to suggest that those old whiskies are tapped out and the expression is now made from much younger sherry casks. Let's see how it goes.

Ardbeg Uigeadail (purchased late 2012)

Nose: big sherry with amontillado/oloroso savoriness, cherries, moderate vegetal peat is an accent rather than the main show, salty, creamy malt, vanilla, Christmas cake. After adding a few drops of water, there is more peat and salt, the sherry becomes more savory and integrated, the overall effect is more creamy, raisins (but not sweet ones), malty background, a bit floral, and some barbecue/wood char comes out.

Taste: sherry and peat occupy different zones with a crossover mid-palate, salted malt and black pepper come in the middle, the peat is very earthy, and there are some tannins at the back.

Finish: earthy, tar, a little tangy vegetal peat, oak tannins, savory sherry, salt

I'm going to come out and say that I think this is nothing but young whisky now. I'm not alone in thinking it's a totally different beast than it used to be. To me it reads like a mashup of Aberlour A'Bunadh and Ardbeg 10, which would be totally in line. Ardbeg, and a number of other distilleries *coughMacallancough* are running into the same issues as a lot of microdistilleries - you can't cheat time. Despite the best efforts of master blenders, there is simply no replacement for whisky sitting in casks for many, many years. Young, first-fill sherry casks are fundamentally different than thirty year old sherry casks (which doesn't even cover the fact that Ardbeg's fermentation and distilling practices have changed over the intervening years). With all that said, this iteration of Uigeadail isn't bad, I'm just not sure that the higher price tag is justified anymore. I'd pay $60-65 for this, to cover the higher proof, but the $75+ that they ask for it in many places is just too much for me unless I can find a bottle from an earlier batch that still contained those old sherry casks.

Edit: check out Michael Kravitz's post today comparing a recent (L12) version to an older (L6) version of Uigeadail. The differences sound very apparent, which stokes the notions that Uigeadail is changing.

Whisky Review: Ardbeg 10 Year - or Don't Believe the Hype

Ardbeg has a long but complicated history. The distillery was founded back in 1815, passing through a number of hands before it was shuttered from 1983-1989. It was brought back to life at reduced capacity during the early to mid-90s, before it was bought by Glenmorangie in 1997 - who in turn are owned by Louis-Vuitton-Möet Hennessy.

As an interesting side-note, when Mark Reiner was looking for a distillery to buy he considered purchasing Ardbeg, but eventually picked the neighboring Bruichladdich distillery instead. One can only imagine what its rebirth would have been like under his and Jim McEwan's quixotic hands instead of the corporate behemoth of LVMH.

I wrote a bit about the distillery before, largely in the context of their bevy of No Age Statement releases, which have become a hallmark for them. But today I will be considering their single remaining whisky with an age statement, the entry-level 10 year old.

Ardbeg 10 Year

Nose: Triscuits (salty, oily, grainy), lightly sweet creamy malt under an herbaceous (rosemary?) and vegetal cloud of peat, some industrial notes of tar, smoke, and grease, a thin layer of oak, some maritime notes, a little bourbon barrel caramel, a little chocolate. After adding a few drops of water, the nose is significantly diminished and seems to fall flat - it gets maltier, with more integrated but weaker peat, which becomes ashier.

Taste: black pepper, olive oil, and salt throughout, with sweet malt and vanilla up front, which becomes more bittersweet with a moderate dose of peat, then slides back towards sweetness at the end. After dilution, the black pepper becomes dominant, with more malty sweetness and bitter tannins, while the oil fades a bit and some chocolate appears near the back.

Finish: sweet peat and malt, with olive oil, salt, black pepper, and flashes of oak and peat

While reasonably pleasant, Ardbeg 10 reminded me of another whisky on my shelf with a similar flavor profile - Kilchoman Machir Bay - so I decided to see how they stacked up against each other. From the first sniff, it's clear that the Kilchoman simply blows Ardbeg out of the water. The depth and intensity are something the current iteration of Ardbeg 10 Year can't even hope to touch. Kilchoman simply does everything Ardbeg 10 does, but better. It's not a matter of craft presentation - both are bottled at 46% without chill filtration or caramel color. Kilchoman is simply better at distilling, wood management, and cask selection. Admittedly, Kilchoman does get a bit of a boost from finishing some of the whisky in ex-sherry barrels, whereas Ardbeg reserves their sherry barrel stock for their Uigeadail expression, but even a pure bourbon barrel Kilchoman would be head and shoulders above. I can only imagine what their single malts will be like when they have a comparable amount of age behind them. Ardbeg needs to step up their game - while they have the volume to undercut Kilchoman by a bit (though they're more or less the same price here in the great state of Oregon), it's not enough to make up for the lack of depth in their whisky. While Ardbeg 10 was a bruiser in the early 2000s due to the inclusion of a lot of older whisky being blended in to cover up the distillery's production holes, I'm guessing that in the Glenmorangie era a) their distilling practices have shifted to focus on getting more spirit out of a given weight of malt, which means that there's less flavor making it into the whisky and b) LVMH is saving all of the really good stuff for their higher priced and limited edition bottlings. But with an introduction like this it's going to be hard to convince me to pony up for those pricier offerings. If nothing else, Ardbeg really needs to be throwing more first-fill casks (and maybe a precious sherry cask or two) into their entry level offering to cover up the weakness of the underlying malt. Going forward I'd love it if they'd shift their fermentation and distilling towards creating more depth. The tiny farm distillery on the other end of the island is utterly putting them to shame.

Cocktail Camp PDX, Part I

This last Sunday I attended the Cocktail Camp event held here in Portland put together by Basil & Co.

Thankfully I was alerted to this event by the fine people at the Reddit Cocktail forum, as I hadn't heard anything about it even a week beforehand.

The event was held in the Pearl District in a rather nice space that had both a lounge-style area with a bar, where the cocktail social hours were held, and a larger space with tables where the presentations were made. You can find lots of photos of the event from the official Flickr stream.

Things got off to a bit of a late start, but this was also reasonably early on a sunny Sunday morning when I'm guessing many of the attendees would have otherwise been eating brunch outside. The first talk was given by Colin Howard of House Spirits and Tony Devencenzi of Bourbon & Branch in San Francisco. They explained some methodology for tasting and how to determine whether or not a given spirit will work in a particular cocktail. They began with the basics, such as selecting good glassware with a tulip shape that will simultaneously give the spirit a large amount of surface area for vaporization and a narrow neck to concentrate the vapors for nosing. In terms of methods, they described a few techniques such as:

• smelling up the nose - carefully drawing the vapors from the spirit further and further up the nose to find different smells in different parts of the nose
• rinsing the mouth with the spirit you're tasting to clear out any other lingering flavors from previously consumed items
• letting a bit of spirit rest under the tongue to let some of it vaporize
• allowing the spirit to move in a directed manner across different parts of the tongue to find different flavors

Tony on the left and Colin on the right discuss tasting with Stone Barn Brandywork's Hard Eight Dark Rye Spirit

What I found most interesting was the discussion of how to think about how a spirit will contribute to a cocktail. One of the fundamental concepts was that you often want to pick spirits that leave room for other flavors. If a spirit is going to crowd out the other elements of a cocktail then it won't integrate in a harmonious fashion. So you want to pick spirits that will contribute to but not overwhelm the cocktail. Another concept was making cocktails either point or counterpoint, which is to say picking ingredients that either reinforce each other or play off each other. The example used was the Manhattan. Making it point would be to pick a whiskey like Rittenhouse, which is bold and spicy, and pairing it with a bold and spicy sweet vermouth like Punt e Mes. On the other side, but still point, would be using a whiskey like Maker's Mark, which is soft and sweet, and pairing it with a gentle sweet Vermouth like Vya. Counterpoint would be swapping those around, such as Rittenhouse with Vya or Maker's Mark with Punt e Mes. In that case each ingredient would offer opposite characteristics, which means that one will probably dominate the other. You can still balance a counterpoint cocktail by shifting the proportions, such as using more whisky and less sweet vermouth in the Maker's Mark/Punt e Mess combo. While these are notions that I've picked up over the last couple of years in an intuitive sense, I'll be thinking about it more consciously from now on.

The second talk was on the histories and varieties of scotch whisky, given by Stuart Ramsay, a Scottish transplant to Portland who runs whisk(e)y classes in the area. He began with a quick overview of the state of scotch whisky, noting how much of the demand is currently being driven by drinkers in India, China and Brazil, which also means an emphasis on blended whisky rather than single malts. This led into a bit of history. Whisky is likely a by-product of the much older local beer industry, which would have been made with malted barley and any other grains that would grow in the area (bere, oats, wheat). When distillation arrived in the British Isles in the late 11th century, Scottish farmers were quick to realize that it could be used to concentrate their relatively weak beer into a potent and compact drink. It remained a mostly local drink up until the mid-19th century. Two events at that point in time had a profound impact on the scotch whisky industry. The first was the introduction of the Coffey or continuous still, which allowed for much lighter-bodied whiskies to be distilled. The second was a change in the availability of international spirits in England. Brandy and Irish whiskey were the drinks of choice among fashionable Londoners until the Phylloxera outbreak of the 1850s wiped out almost all of the grapes in France, crippling the brandy industry. Entrepreneurial Scottish merchants tried to sell their local tipple down south, but few consumers were interested in such a harsh, unrefined spirit. Many of those merchants, such as John Walker, the Chivas Brothers and Whyte & Mackay, were grocers who also sold fortified wines such as sherry, port and Madeira. It was suggested that aging the harsh, unaged 'clearac' whisky in used fortified wine barrels would help to take the edge off the spirit and produce a more marketable product. The combination of aging and blending in lighter grain whisky produced by Coffey stills made whiskies that were enormously popular, especially when mixed with soda water. However this meant that most of the malt whisky ended up in blends rather than being bottled as single malt scotch. The popularity of single malts is a much more recent phenomenon, having become a real trend only around the 1980s or so. With that said, roughly 90% of the malt whisky made in Scotland is still used in blends.

Stuart Ramsay's props, including malted barley, peat, cask wood, miniature still and Strathisla samples

As demonstrations, he passed around jars of malted barley, including a variety usually used for making beer, the variety usually used for making single malt whisky, and a peated version of the malted barley used for making whisky. He also passed showed us a lump of peat and talked about how it is formed in bogs and its use in drying malt.

After the history lesson, we were led through a series of tastings of single malt whiskies. I jotted down notes furiously, but the pours were small and time was tight, so I wasn't able to get as much out of them as I would have hoped. He began by passing around three samples from the Strathisla Distillery (the base for Chivas blended whisky), which I was able to smell briefly:

Unaged Clearac - vegetal, a touch fruity

Ex-Bourbon Barrel Aged - bourbony sweet, nuts, maple syrup

Ex-Sherry Barrel Aged - heavy maple syrup, spicy, sherry

Then we began with two lighter single malt whiskies from the Lowlands and Speyside:

Glenkinchie 12


Nose: floral, just ripe fruits a hint of malt and a touch of sherry

Taste: barely sweet, very grainy, sour and slightly floral/herbal at the back

Finish: floral/herbal, slightly bitter

I was pleasantly surprised that I enjoyed this whisky more than I feared, given some of the less than stellar reviews I've read. While it's definitely light, the floral emphasis was quite nice and made for a whisky that I can imagine sipping on a warmer day. However, Stuart did bemoan the demise of Rosebank, a now shuttered Lowland distillery, which produced superior whisky until it was bought and shut down by Diageo.

Glen Grant 10


Nose: medium sherry, sweet, floral, rather fruity, a touch of chocolate

Taste: very light, not very sweet, a bit malty, floral and bitter near the end

Finish: floral and bittersweet

While not my favorite Speyside whisky ever, this wasn't half bad. Everything was just a bit too light for my taste (which could probably be solved by bumping up the bottling proof from 40%), but it made a nice bridge from the very light Lowlander to the heftier Highland and Island single malts that we were about to consume.

We then moved to two different Highland whiskies from Glenmorangie (which I've reviewed before).

Glenmorangie Original


Nose: fruity, malt, brown sugar, chocolate

Taste: sweet, floral, slightly bitter at the end

Finish: light

This is almost always the first whisky I suggest that people new to single malt whisky start with. While relatively light, its flavors are still sufficiently bold to hold my interest, but not so complex that it requires a lot of attention. A truly classic whisky.

Glenmorangie Quinta Ruban


Nose: port, chocolate, sweet

Taste: very spicy, port wine

Finish: port wine

Sadly I was quite rushed on this one and wasn't able to get many notes, but I've sung paeans to it for good reason. This is one of the most delightfully lush whiskies I've ever had the fortune to sip and would still recommend it over a lot of other sweet, unpeated whiskies. An excellent example of what wine-finishing can do for whisky.

Next we moved to two medium-peated island whiskies from Skye and Islay.

Talisker 10


Nose: peat, barbecue, creamy malt, brown sugar, floral

Taste: sweet up front, big spice further back, surprisingly light

Finish: pepper, peat

This was my first time trying Talisker 10 and it did not disappoint. While not quite as rich as its sherry cask finished sibling, it was still quite a tasty whisky. I have two 200 mL bottles of this waiting to be reviewed, so I should be able to come back with something much more in depth in the not too distant future.

Bowmore 15 Darkest


Nose: sherry, surprisingly light peat

Taste: sweet sherry, nuts, pepper

Finish: gentle smoke, pepper

I was pleasantly surprised by how good this whisky was. Most of the reviews noted it as being rather tepid, but I find it pretty enjoyable even after the spicy punch of the Talisker. While it probably would be even better at a higher bottling proof, I'm just intrigued enough to keep my eye out for a good deal on this one. Hopefully I'll be able to snag a bottle some day and give you a more complete review.

Lastly, a bruiser from Islay.

Ardbeg 10


Nose: lovely peat, very fresh, sweet grain, mouthwash

Taste: very sweet up front, pepper, peat and smoke further back, minty

Finish: smoke and peat

All hail peat. Seriously, I used to be downright scared of the stuff, even from a relatively mild whisky like Highland Park 12. But I have seen the light and Ardbeg is delicious. The whipsaw from intense sweetness at the beginning of the sip to the blast of spice and peat was utterly delightful. I'm a convert.

Overall I thought that these were very well selected whiskies for displaying the range of what single malt whisky can offer. While the pours could have been a bit healthier, it would have been nice to have better glasses for nosing (tumblers are about as bad as it gets), and I really would have liked to have had more time to spend with each whisky, it was extremely well put together given the constraints. I'm quite interested in checking out some of the other whisky classes that Stuart offers here in the Portland area.

That's it for Part I of my Cocktail Camp report. Coming up I'll talk about the second half, when I finally got around to drinking some cocktails and got some really great information about how to host a cocktail party and what to do with bitter aperitifs and digestifs.