Ardbeg 1975 31 Year Old Cask Strength 1378 Sherry Butt (bottled 2006) Single Malt w/box 700ml

453bots produced

There have been many ups and downs on the long road to Ardbeg throughout the years. Ardbeg’s story is one of irrepressible spirit surviving against the odds, finally emerging as “unquestionably, the greatest distillery on Earth.”
Ardbeg was officially established by the MacDougall family in 1815, although it seems that illicit distilling had already been taking place on the site for over twenty years, with Alexander Stewart having founded a distillery there in 1794. Like its fellow southern Ileachs, Laphroaig and Lagavulin, Ardbeg is heavily peated, with a turfy smoke and seaspray character predominant in most bottlings.
The distillery fell foul of the global whisky downturn in the late 1970s, which led to the distillery falling silent in 1981. In 1997 Ardbeg was taken over by Glenmorangie plc, and the past decade has seen a remarkable turnaround in fortunes. An initial release of aged stocks bottled as a 17 year-old in newly-designed packaging proved an instant runaway success, and has been followed by a string of highly successful official bottlings.