As much as I still love the distillery, Ardbeg's special releases have always been hit & miss. Actually, let's say they've always been a rollercoaster ride. To be fair, for a long time the highs were quite high with the likes of Ardbog, Dark Cove CR, Grooves CR , while the lows like Auriverdes, Kelpie and Drum weren't really that low in the wider whisky world scheme of things. But since those earlier days the waters have been muddied by the regular addition of more & more special releases in addition to the "Day" / Feis Ile bottlings, and the pricing on those has sky-rocketed in comparison. Take Arrrdbeg and the recent Fermutation for example, which were both lacklustre whiskies with greedy price tags. Then the distillery redeemed itself with the 8-year old "For Discussion", which was both great quality and great value for money, and is still readily available. On the other hand we've seen three batches of the 19-year old Traigh Bhan hit the shelves, where while the quality is great the local pricing has increased by $100 AUD each time, for an identical specification - the third batch is now $500! Like I said, a rollercoaster ride. For the distillery's relatively small output of around 1.25-million litres of spirit per year - although that recently climbed to over 2.4-million litres with the new still house - and considering the constant & significant demand for the core range offerings in the 10-year old, Uigeadail and Corryvreckan, Ardbeg does manage to release a huge amount of different limited releases. And most don't seem to be very "limited". Let's not forget that they continue to release two different versions of their Feis Ile / Ardbeg Day releases every year, and have done since 2015, with the higher strength un-packaged & modestly labelled Committee Release soon followed by larger amounts of the 46% ABV standard version with its more elaborate labelling & packaging. In Australia at least, the stock of both does seem to be hanging around longer & longer with each year that ticks over. I can't say if that's down to larger amounts of bottles in the releases or just a larger local allocation of stock, but I suspect it's also because many whisky enthusiasts have a bit of Ardbeg fatigue these days. Then again, any losses there have probably been taken up by the increased number of flippers, speculators & investors that the pandemic has spawned, and Ardbeg is always near the top of their lists!
Personally, I'm still falling victim to some of these releases, so I can't knock the distillery team for doing their jobs well. The production seem to find/design a unique selling point each time that is both appealing to the long-term Ardbeg fans and the novices, and even some of the cynics. The distillery's corporate marketing team then run wild after taking their daily dose of LSD, resulting in stories about sea monsters, hippies, dragons, and punks, and other totally unnecessary crap that has nothing to do with the whisky itself. The real USP with these Ardbegs is usually just a case of throwing some different casks in the vatting, or occasionally they play with the spirit itself instead. With this 2022 Ardbeg Day release "Ardcore", they've played with the spirit again, but this time with the barley itself. I'm sure most of us are familiar with Glenmorangie's very successful Signet expression, which uses roasted malt a.k.a "chocolate malt" as an unknown portion of its mash bill. That roasted malt is similar to what a brewer would use to make a porter or a stout, and it gives Signet chocolate & coffee flavours in the spirit itself. Glenmorangie is Ardbeg's sister distillery, with the same "mad scientist" Dr. Bill Lumsden overlooking "whisky creation" at both sites, so it was almost inevitable that Ardbeg would do something similar one day. And that's essentially what we have here, an Ardbeg that was "created with roasted black malt", which is even more heavily roasted than the chocolate malt used in Signet. Much like Signet, we don't officially know exactly how much of the malted barley was roasted - although according to Distillery Manager Colin Gordon via YouTube, that proportion was 25%. It's virtually impossible to use 100% heavily roasted malt in a mash bill since it creates problems with milling and mashing, and particularly with fermentation - after being kilned the black malt is extremely dry, and there's much less fermentable sugar available for the yeast to feast on, so it has to be mixed in with regular malted barley for the sake of proper fermentation and a decent yield. Also according to Colin Gordon the remaining 75% of the malted barley used in Ardcore had a lower peating level than Ardbeg's standard 55 ppm specification, and I'm only speculating here, but that could also mean that it didn't come from Ardbeg's usual source, Port Ellen Maltings.
As is often the case with these limited release Ardbegs, we don't know what type of cask/s Ardcore was matured in, or how long it has been left to mature in those casks. Presumably it's all ex-bourbon casks, and I suspect most (if not all) of those were refill. I also suspect it's quite a young whisky, based on smell & taste, and also the colour, which is paler than the 10. I'm guessing we're looking at less than 8-years here. And maybe that's why Ardcore is being described as "the most hardcore Ardbeg ever". We're looking at the Committee Release version of Ardcore here, which was bottled at 50.1% (but not cask strength), is non-chill filtered and natural colour. Local pricing on the Committee Release was reasonable at $225 AUD, while the standard version at 46% is less reasonable at around $230 AUD - and it's still readily available. Let's find out just how spiky this ball is!
Ardbeg Day release 2022. Distilled from 25% heavily roasted black malt, 75% malt peated to less than Ardbeg's usual 55 ppm. Unknown cask type/s but presumably refill ex-bourbon. Non-chill filtered, natural colour.
Colour: Very pale gold. White wine.
Nose: Definitely very young, sweet and quite raw. Settles & opens up with extra breathing time, but it's still very young & raw. Dark cocoa powder, new plastic tupperware, milky caramel espresso (i.e. with a shot of caramel syrup added), glue, aniseed & charcoal briquettes. Burnt rubber, hot tar, new bandaids & hot smoky peanut oil. Some green banana, smoked pear and lemon rind around the edges.
Texture: Light-medium weight. Oily & juicy entry but it thins out & fades very quickly. A slight heat but not harsh, and fades quickly.
Taste: More caramel espresso, but no milk this time. Charcoal & tar again, plastic, new rubber and a touch of aniseed. Soot & ash, smoked pear, and a touch of salted bitter lemon. Hot smoky peanut oil and a touch of toffee stout in the background.
Finish: Short length. Aniseed & caramel espresso, but with milk again this time. Turns creamy with a little vanilla, unripe pineapple, rubber pencil eraser and hot peanut oil. Tar, bitter charcoal & lemon rind.
Score: 3 out of 5, but not miles away from a 3.5.
Notes: So we haven't been entirely punked with the Ardcore Committee Release, but it was close. Thankfully it did open up with extra breathing time, but there are definitely shades of the very lacklustre Wee Beastie here. That plasticky sweetness and the pear notes seem to show the youth and immaturity, which are also present in that 5-year old example. Thankfully Ardcore does have more character than Wee Beastie, but I don't think it's much older. I understand why Ardbeg would want to fill this into mostly (if not all) refill bourbon casks and to bottle it young, since they want that black malt to show through as much as possible, which means keeping the spirit front & centre in the finished product. Personally I would've preferred a few slightly older first fill bourbon casks be thrown into the mix, which would've helped give it some more weight & depth, and a longer finish, in my amateur opinion. Even if they were casks of "regular" Ardbeg mixed in with the 25% black malt spirit. That used to be the standard procedure with these special releases, they'd be vattings of "regular" bourbon cask Ardbeg married with whatever cask that year's point of difference was. But the distillery seems to have moved away from that practice now, even giving us a cask finish at one point (Ardbeg Drum) - which has historically never been the case with Ardbeg, they were always marriages / vattings of separately matured casks, even in the core range.
Still, Ardcore Committee Release is a pleasant experience, more so than Wee Beastie if you ask me, and that black malt does show through with the extra caramel, aniseed & rubber notes. There's certainly a noticeably lower peat influence compared to regular Ardbeg, which makes sense given the lower peating level of the malt used for the 75% peated malt, in addition to the 25% unpeated black malt in the mash bill. It's certainly not my favourite Ardbeg Day / Feis bottling, and as usual, the biggest enemy of any limited release Ardbeg is the Ardbeg core range. That's fine at the original retail pricing on the committee release since they're aren't too far apart, but I wouldn't be paying more than that on the secondary market given the difference in quality. Despite the swings in quality & flavour over the years, Uigeadail and Corryvreckan are still forces to be reckoned with when you need an Ardbeg fix. And frankly I'd take a dram of either of them, or the 10-year old, over this Ardcore.
Cheers!
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