Last Night's Tipple

I am currently reading Andrew Jefford's book Peat Smoke and Spirit: A Portrait of Islay and Its Whiskies, which is a travelogue cum history cum whisky tasting book of Islay. I have to admit that the chapter in which he describes the terrain of the various regions of the island is not the most interesting thing that I have ever read, but the chapters about the history of the island and its residents and about the seven distilleries still active on Islay are enjoyable.

Ardbeg is the first distillery that Jefford discusses. It lies on the south coast of Islay (along with Laphroaig and Lagavulin), and it dates from 1798. By 1880, it was the most productive distillery on Islay, producing 250,000 gallons of whisky a year. Like most malt distilleries, Ardbeg suffered hard times during the Depression and World War II, closing from 1932-1935 and again from 1939-1945. After the war, the distillery passed between a couple of different owners and was on the verge of closing in 1978 when Allied-Domeq bought it. The problem was that Allied-Domeq also owned Laphroaig and consequently had limited use for Ardbeg whisky -- remember that this was during the period before the emergence of single malts, when all malt whisky was destined for use as blendings; the character that Laphroaig and Ardbeg would bring to a blend are largely similar. The result of this was that Allied-Domeq only ran Ardbeg a few days a year to produce what little they needed, and they allowed the distillery to fall into disrepair. They sold it to Glenmorangie in 1997, and Glenmorangie began a comprehensive (and expensive) program of rehabilitation. Two of the most important of these (at least to the character of the whisky) are the rationalization of the wood aging regime and the standardization of fill levels in the stills. Before Glenmorangie bought Ardbeg, new-make whisky went into whatever barrels happened to be on hand; now, it mostly goes into first-fill or second-fill used Bourbon barrels. Because Allied-Domeq only ran Ardbeg a few days a year, they wanted to maximize their yield for those days and consequently overfilled the stills. This reduces copper contact with the spirit, which in turn makes for a heavier whisky. Glenmorangie reduced the fill level and thus lightened the whisky Ardbeg makes.

Speaking of lightness, that's not a word one usually associates with peated whiskies. But Ardbeg's operation is geared toward producing light whisky. Relatively small fills of the stills has this effect. So does the presence of purifiers on the lyne arms of the spirit stills, the lamp-glass shape of both the wash and spirit stills, and the relatively narrow spirit cuts. All of this increases contact between the spirit and copper, which allows the copper to react to impurities in the spirit and this filter them out. So Ardbeg is something of an anomaly: a lighter, peaty whisky. When you first nose the 10 year old bottling, it's all peat smoke and bacon. That blows off after a little while to reveal a fresh, malty whisky. It was very enjoyable, more so than I remember it.

(Incidentally, my bottle was a gift from Ben and Sara from a few years ago. This means that its contents were distilled during the Allied-Domeq reign; and you can tell it from the extremely pale color of the whisky, which is a result of them using old barrels that had little color left to impart. It will be interesting to try the newer Glenmorangie-made whisky, which should be coming onto the market within the next year or so. This should be more deeply-colored and wood-influenced, lighter, and more peaty due to some innovations that Glenmorangie has brought to mashing that increase the quantity of phenols that make it from the malt to the wash.)