Another day another tasty treat for the S&P crew. It's been a while since we had a new Ardbeg in our glasses so we've been looking forward to this.
Ardbeg Scorch: Islay single malt, NAS, 46% ABV, $215 CAD, aged in dragon charred barrels.
Sniffing around:
Scott start us off with light malty apples. We're not sure whether he poured the right scotch.
Simon & Sean are both more on the peat. Smoked barley and salted lemons.
Trevor gets a lot of peat and tons of smokiness. He likes the smoked barley note. Briny.
Kyle gets subtle honey.
We cheers.
Sean starts us off with cinnamon, cinnamon hearts almost.
Scott says it's toasty. Definitely can taste the char. Like you're sucking a lump of coal. Sweet briny notes there too. Honeyed lemon with black pepper.
Simon agrees, burnt oak. A little apple note in there. Little dark chocolate type bitterness on the finish. Herbally notes. Sage is good, got that from the bottle.
Scott agrees for herbal.
Sean still just gets charred fireball. Next day campfire on the nose now.
The burnt wood is actually really nice haha.
Reviews: Trevor starts us off. He likes the burnt taste, it's different. This isn't just gimmicky. Well done. 88 for Trevor. Solid stuff. Kyle is thinking 87 here. He wouldn't buy this but he will certainly enjoy the rest of his 5oz. Would do a good job at clearing your nasal cavity. Simon loves the coal sucking note. Comes together well. OK Corry and Oogie are still better and cheaper, he won't be looking for a bottle at the cost but this is super well done and the experiment really worked out. 90. Sean agrees this is really well done. 85. Scott is our lowest bidder tonight at 80. Doesn't really differentiate itself from Wee Beastie that much in his opinion. Averages out to 86.
Overall: We all enjoyed this and it's cool to see the gimmick pull through, but we also all agree the value on this is pretty poor. Uigeadail and Corryvreckan are both better whiskies for 2/3ds the cost. I think most of us agree Wee Beastie is just as or nearly as good as this.
Cheers!
The S&P Crew.
Comments