Hello Folks, welcome back Ladies & Gentleman. Today we have an unexpected bottle of whisky to review. As I say in my BIO "❌not much of a peathead, even tho I drink peated samples(!) but usually never full bottles❌" right? Well I still like peated whiskies, I just don't usually buy full bottles of it. However I saw the Ardbeg 5 Wee Beastie Warehouse Edition on sale for a very good price and I could not skip it now could I? After all Ardbeg is Ardbeg and peat is peat, neither of them are bad. Ardbeg is very confident in this bottle because they put the 5 yo age statement there. Not many distilleries do that. My bottle wasn't sealed for long, we opened it with my father and a friend of ours during a European Championship football match. Everyone really liked it and I was genuinely stunned how good this whisky is at this young age. Let's get right into it.

About the distillery

Ardbeg distillery is a Scotch whisky distillery in Ardbeg on the North West coast of the isle of Islay, Argyll and Bute, Scotland, in the Inner Hebrides group of islands. The distillery is owned by Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy, and produces a heavily peated Islay whisky. The distillery uses malted barley sourced from the maltings in Port Ellen.

The Ardbeg distillery was officially founded in 1815 by John McDougall. But Whisky was distilled there long before that. There are no documentations, as Ardbeg was an illegal business back in 1794. So McDougall probably didn't build the Ardbeg distillery himself but bought it from the former owners and opened it officially under his name. The name Ardbeg comes from the Gaelic word 'ad bheag' for small hill.

In the early years the sales of Ardbeg were high and in 1835 they even had to raise production to meet the high demand. In 1838 the distillery became insolvent and was bought by a spirits dealer from Glasgow named Thomas Buchanan. He now owned the distillery, but it was still run by the McDougall family. After the death of Alexander, the son of John McDougall, the first women in history became distillery managers. They were Alexander's two sisters Margaret and Flora. They now managed the distillery together with Colin Hay. In 1853 Colin Hay became the owner of the distillery and ran the business with his son, who later followed his footsteps. In 1922 the distillery was bought by the McDougall family again. After a few managers at Ardbeg the distillery finally went bankrupt in 1932 and was closed during the depression. After the depression the distillery was run by the McDougall family until 1959, when the Ardbeg Distillery Ltd. was founded. After a takeover in the 70s by Allied Distillers the distillery was closed from 1981 until 1989. The reopening began slowlyas the distillery only distilled Whisky for two month a year under the flag of Allied Distillers Ltd.

Finally in 1997 the Glenmorangie Plc. bought Ardbeg and reopened the distillery for good. The brand was launched with a new design. This is the design we currently see. In 1998 the distillery got its own visitor centre and cafe, the Old Kiln Cafe. They are both on site and in the typical Ardbeg design. In 2004 the Moet Hennessy company acquires Glenmorangie and therefore Ardbeg belongs to Moet Hennessy now.

The production capacity is 2.8 million litres of alcohol per year. Ardbeg doesn't supply its spirit to the Blended Whisky industry, but sometimes a few barrels reach the independent bottlers so there are quite a number of independent bottles on the market.

Ardbeg distills its Whisky twice. All stills have quite a tall neck and are constricted just above the conical neck of the pot still. The lyne arm is also rising after the bend. All these factors result in a stable distillation with a lot of reflux, which filters out the sharp and alcoholic tones that you taste in cheap spirits. 

Ardbeg has a lot of warehouses on Islay, the most famous one is the number 2 warehouse as it has never been painted white like all the other buildings. Ardbeg usually uses Bourbon casks, but occasionally you get some Sherry casks to sweeten up some of their bottlings such as the Uigedail (10% sherry casks) or the famous Lord of the Isles.

The selection of casks ranges from first- and second-fill to Oloroso, Madeira and a whole lot of Wine casks. And as you know from Ardbeg, there is always experimentation.

The core range of Ardbeg consists of the Ardbeg 5 Wee Beastie, TEN, An Oa, Uigeadail and Corryvreckan. The TEN is named after its age. Uigeadail was named after the Loch Uigeadail a lake. The Corryvreckan is a famous sea vortex between the Isle of Jura and the Isle of Scarba. A new addition to the standard bottlings is the Ardbeg Wee Beastie, which is a fairly young bottling with an age statement of five years.  

Ardbeg 5 yo 'Wee Beastie' - Natural Color (?), Non-chill filtered, 47.4%

"A monster of a dram. Ardbeg Wee Beastie is the latest permanent expression to join the Distillery's Ultimate Range. At just five years old, Wee Beastie is a feisty young creature with a formidable taste. Chocolate, tar, and savoury meats. Black pepper and sappy pine resin. Young and intensely smoky. The rawest, smokiest Ardbeg ever."

A combination of Ex-Bourbon and Ex-Oloroso Sherry casks.

Nose: Right away, very fresh. Herbal notes, freshly cut grass. A nice cold, salty hint of peat. A very strong vanilla base with a nice malty undertone. Iodine. Fresh green fruits from the orchard such as pears and apples. Barley sugar, wet earth and tar. Leather, black pepper and campfire smoke. Lovely nose. I could have never guess that it is only 5 years of age. 

Taste: Wow. Full, round. Very rich and oily. Quite dry also. The alcohol is on point. Lots of vanilla with milk chocolate. Pepper rush, ginger and cloves. Lovely earthy, dry peat. Salt.. lots of it. Malty and fruity again with green apples and pears. A hint of smoked pineapple and some dark furits such as figs. Leather, tar and coal. It's truly lovely.

Finish: Very long and unexpected that it is this long since it's only 5 yo. Mouthcoating, lingers for a long time. Salty and earthy. Very dry. Some coconut and smoked pineapple along with iodine and vanilla. All of this creeps away very slowly, not urging you to drink more and more. On point.

Overall I am very impressed with this whisky. It's very young but at the same time very mature. I don't like Ardbeg as a brand since they sometimes sell mediocre whisky for sky-high prices with their marketing BUT in this case: this is awesome. I'd say buy it if you never had it. You can't go wrong with a full bottle of this if you like peat and smoke. This is getting a solid 87 / 100 from me and it's very well deserved.

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Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed it. To many more. Sláinte.