For the Whisky Show 2020 bottlings, The Whisky Exchange surprised us with a wonderfully creative idea (again). Their art director Raj ‘Mr C’ Chavda created a giant illustrations and each bottle has a small, unique part of it on the label. On the back label there’s a link to claim your label and see the bigger picture.
We’re trying the Ardbeg 2000, a 20 year-old single bourbon barrel.
Ardbeg 20 yo 2000 ‘An ever-changing world of order’ (57,2%, TWE for Whisky Show 2020, bourbon barrel #1087, 247 btl.)
Nose: great balance of warm, medicinal peat and rounded citrus. Lemons and orange juice. Menthol freshness with a bright lime / peach jam sweetness underneath. Gingery oak. Wet gravel, seashelss, smoked almonds and the lightest hint of tar. This sits at a great intersection of Islay power and rounder, rather fruity maturity. Lovely.
Mouth: more power now, with big medicinal notes. Iodine, camphor, sea spray and creosote. Again there’s a fruity acidity that we haven’t seen often in modern production. A leathery note and shoe polish, with a big minty side, as well as some oaky vanilla and chocolate in the end. Punchy and more vertical than the nose suggested.
Finish: long, with elegant peat, hints of polished wood and medicinal touches.
Great Ardbeg, I love the integration, mellowed maturity and fresh citric fruitiness. Available from The Whisky Exchange – well, maybe. Let’s hope the ticket holders didn’t snap it all up.
By the way, this sample arrived the day before TWE announced they wouldn’t ship to Belgium any more after they ran into trouble with our customs. It really sucks that I won’t be able to try and inform you about their releases, at least not for the foreseeable future.
I don’t know all the details, but I can almost see a well planned strategy to block or at least hinder incoming spirits after the huge tax increase a few years ago (which ironically led to a constant decrease of tax income). First Dutch and German stores give up on shipping to Belgium, now it starts in the UK. Free European traffic of goods, you say? If this continues to develop I might as well shut down this blog altogether.