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Fellow Drammers!
Ardbeg’s got a new sherriff in town! On January 1st of this year, Bryony McNiven became Ardbeg’s new Distillery Manager, making her Ardbeg’s first female distillery manager in nearly 200 years. Bryony (pronounced BRINE-EE) follows in the footsteps of the Macdougall sisters, who ran Ardbeg almost 200 years ago. She is both a native of Islay and the daughter of an Ardbeg stillman — and has devoted her entire career to Ardbeg. As we understand it, this will be her first event for an audience in the United States if not the world! Needless to say, we’re incredibly humbled and honored!
Well, this obviously calls for a big lineup! We decided to do something fun — since this will be taking place just a week before the big Feis Ile festivities on Islay (which of course ends with Ardbeg Day!), we thought it would be fun to give it a bit of a Feis theme.
Please Note: We offered 60 tasting kits that we’re calling “SET A” that came with a bottle of Spectacular, courtesy of our friends at Ardbeg. That sold out very fast and a lot of folks asked if we could frankenstein together a SET B, so we have. We used up our pile of Spectacular bottles, so SET B will include a SAMPLE of Spectacular but not the bottle. It will also include a Distillery Exclusive single cask of Ardbeg, but it is a different single cask than SET A gets. Otherwise the two sets are exactly the same. So, SET B will get 11 expressions (all the same liquid as SET A except a different distillery exclusive single cask).
Both sets include the new 2026 Feis bottling, the 2025 Feis bottling, plus a couple of distillery-exclusive pours that we brought back with us from last year’s Feis Ile festivities. Check out our lineup, 11 samples:
SET B - Ardbeg Single Cask #2447, Distillery-exclusive single cask, only available at the distillery during Feis Ile back in 2024. 1 of 637 bottles, 58.2% abv, aged in a 1st fill Amontillado sherry butt). We also featured this at an online tasting with their former Distillery Manager Colin back in August 2024.
SET A - Ardbeg Single Cask #3918 - This distillery-exclusive single cask was only available in person at the distillery if you attended last year’s Feis Ile festivities! 14yo and (if I'm reading the label right) fully matured in a 2nd fill Port barrique. Distilled July 2009, bottled January 2024. Yield: 268 bottles. 57.9% abv.
Ardbeg Homecoming. Islay exclusive bottling, we don’t know a ton about this other than it was only available at the distillery, and it was finished in "aged rum barrels". 56.1% abv.
Ardbeg Dolce. The brand new Ardbeg Day limited edition Feis Ile bottling for 2026! Matured in a combination of bourbon casks and Marsala dolce casks, the sweetest style of Sicily’s fortified wine. It’s bottled at 47.8% abv.
Ardbeg Cask Strength 10yo. Also brand new — we’ll do a side-by-side comparison of this 61.7% beauty with the core range….
Ardbeg 10yo. Iconic, bourbon-barrel matured! But how will it hold up to the cask strength version?
Ardbeg Smokiverse. The 2025 Ardbeg Day Feis Ile bottling limited edition, which experimented with high gravity mashing. 48.3% abv
Ardbeg Spectacular. The 2024 Ardbeg Day Feis Ile bottling limited edition, which is bourbon and port cask matured. SET A gets a bottle of this, SET B gets a sample of it.
Ardbeg Traigh Bhan 19yo. 46.2% abv
Ardbeg 17yo. This recent limited edition release was a throwback to the original 17yo legendary bottling (which was retired in 2004), even staying true to its original bottling strength of 40% abv.
Uigeadail. This classic of Ardbeg’s core range is ex-bourbon and sherry cask matured. And bottled at a whopping 54.2% abv.
Corryvreckan. Another classic in Ardbeg’s core range. While the Uige is sweeter with the sherry cask influence, this is pure unadulterated Islay maritime notes, with a hint of French oak influence. Not to be trifled with. 57.1% abv.
Helluva lineup, no? We’re excited, and we can’t wait to welcome Bryony to Drammers Club! We hope you can join us, please let us know if you have any questions, and a huge thank you to the team at Ardbeg for making this possible!
WHEN: Starting at Noon Pacific / 3pm EST / 20:00 in Scotland on Saturday, May 16th
ZOOM LINK: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88436703364?pwd=Jp7B9Lva7CkE0JsdsSCFAewzGZAEe9.1
Meeting ID: 884 3670 3364
Passcode: 051626
Cheers,
Drammers Club