Ardbeg 21 yo 1992 / 2013 Hunter Laing Old Malt Cask 15th Anniv. 50.2% vs Ardbeg 21 yo 1993 / 2014 Mackillop’s Choice #1289 54.3%
So there’s going to be a new core range 19 yo Official Bottling?
Ardbeg 21 yo 1992 / 2013 Hunter Laing Old Malt Cask 15th Anniv. 50.2%
It’s a perfectly chiselled and sharply maritime kind of peat, distinctive as a certain kind of Islay malt. Preserved lemons and gherkins. Muscled, salty and briney. Broad shouldered but not brooding. Despite all that it retains a sort of freshness characteristic of these 90s Ardbegs – newly pulled seaweed and crisp sea wind. A lot here really – Fisherman’s Friend Original. White hot flecks of flint and chipped granite. Thick white smoke and red hot embers. Mustard seed, and rucola. What its not: not particularly tarry, ashy nor medicinal. And the peat feels big but lean and certainly not massive. It recalls a precise and unburdened Caol Ila actually. 90 pts
Ardbeg 21 yo 1993 / 2014 Mackillop’s Choice #1289 54.3%
Very similar, we’re back in that very maritime and fresh phase at Ardbeg with salty peat and hot flints. But where the OMC was sharply chiselled and perfectly lean, this one exchanges some of that lemony sharpness for thick mineral oils and lubricants, as well as a bigger goopier earthiness more along the lines of mud and roots than tar. The sea comes through especially salty on the palate, along with fresh catch and dried nets, and here develops into dried out muddy rubber boots, lit cigars, menthol oil and sea drenched overcoats. Again a wonderful whisky. 89 pts.
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