A name often read as small cape. Seen from the sea, the low headland on Islay’s southern coast suits it well.
These are two words that are repeated countless times in Scottish place names. It is encountered several times on the Islay map alone.
Ardbeg stood closed in the summer of 1996. Glenmorangie bought and revived it the following year: a distillery known for light spirit from tall stills had taken on one famous for dense peat smoke.
The wash starts with heavily peated malt, yet a fermentation of more than sixty hours also develops fruit. Smoke and fruit enter the still together.
The neck begins the separation, but Ardbeg’s defining intervention comes after the vapour reaches the lyne arm.
Some vapour condenses in the purifier before reaching the condenser. The liquid collects there instead of passing straight on.
A return pipe sends that liquid back to the spirit still to boil again, increasing both reflux and contact with copper.
The purifier reduces some heavy, oily character without removing the phenolic aromas from peat. Dense smoke and lifted fruit can therefore remain together.
Ardbeg is intensely peated, yet the purifier helps keep the texture from becoming simply heavy. That tension defines the house style.
Based on Ardbeg 10.
The shape stretches sharply towards peat. That long upper-left point captures the smoke-first character associated with Islay whisky.
It is important that the citrus axis is also large. If only the smoke had been strong, the peat axis would have been longer. Because the purifier increases reflux and copper contact, bright lemon-like notes remain alongside the smoke.
Overlay it with Dalmore or Balvenie and the direction is entirely different. Scotch can occupy remarkably different flavour profiles.
If you follow the coastal road south of Islay, you will reach Laphroaig, Lagavulin, and Ardbeg in that order. These three, known as the Kildalton Three, defined Islay's style. Even though they have the same peat and the same sea, the three have different personalities, and one of the devices that makes the difference is the purifier attached here.
Malt is obtained from Port Ellen Maltings. At one time, they did their own malting, but as production increased in the late 1970s, they could not afford it. The water comes from Loch Uggeddal, and the name of this lake itself became the name of the distillery's bottle.
For much of the 20th century, Ardbeg mainly supplied spirit for blends. Production almost stopped in the 1980s, and for part of the 1990s the distillery ran for only two months a year. Its present reputation was built after that long interruption.
Two words commonly used on the Islay map became the name of the distillery.