Ardbeg An Oa
The Ultimate Range O.B. | 46.6% ABV
Score: 6/10
Good stuff.
TL;DR
Subtly different, but still fundamentally Ardbeg
Find someone else for your sweeties, kids.
It feels like only yesterday that we were looking out our windows at scorched earth.
The lush green grasses of the United Kingdom were turning yellow as a heatwave ripped across the country. Body thermometers bumped into overload as office workers set off with ice packs stuffed down their pants in an attempt to offset the sauna-like conditions they’d have to endure for the day. And then, just like that, it’s autumn, and the leaves are turning orange, visually setting fire to our beautiful landscapes.
It seems to have snuck up on us, autumn has. The other week we were out for a weekend stroll through the local woods when an orange leaf detached from above and floated serenely downwards; my wife announced jubilantly that it was “the first leaf of autumn”. As we watched in silence, the leaf fluttered down to rest on the ground, taking its place amongst the carpet of other orange leaves. “Oh,” we said. Autumn is already here.
This time of year is the most exciting for me. We love to take trips up north at the weekend, into the Highlands of Pitlochry and surrounding areas, and each year we get more excited for the changing views as we thread our way through the valleys of Perthshire. The heather appears in vivid purple bursts, only to be brown swathes the following week; the trees carpeting the hillsides shift into a fabulous patchwork of oranges, reds and yellows, and the higher hilltops accept their first dusting of snow. It is, for want of a better word, magical.
Halloween is a weird thing that we, in Scotland, seem to have reluctantly accepted as an activity unhinged people do every October. It’s an indication of how sociable the Crystals are that, as the neighbours start pitching up inflatable ghosts and hanging foam spiders from their eaves (in severe breaches of health and safety, Doog notes), that we recede further into our house, switching lights off as we go. We don’t really do trick or treating — there’s something wicked about trudging your kids around rainy streets, knocking on doors and asking strangers to give you sweeties for free. What lessons are we teaching them?
My daughter is as reluctant as us, preferring the shortcut of taking the sweetie box from the shelf and eating those instead. We’ll usually get a pumpkin and carve it, because we’re arty and like the challenge, but we certainly don’t stick it outside because that’s tantamount to inviting people to knock on your door and ask for sweeties. For free. Bah Humbug…or whatever the Halloween equivalent is.
“I don’t swoon about peated whisky — it’s a unique flavour to consume and I find that it accelerates my swan dive towards a hangover far quicker than other whiskies.”
October is the time of year that the sun droops lower in the sky and the heating goes back on to warm our chilled bodies, but this year it’s a battle of attrition, with more and more layers of clothing added to offset the cost of heating bills that are, after a long bout of absolute panic owing to the threat of bills 4 or 5 times our typical, thankfully coming back down into the realm of sanity. Candles are an effective ally in the war against the energy supplier and, after a while, become objects of comfort as well as sources of heat. There’s something really enjoyable about sitting in a room surrounded by the flickering glow of candles, especially when you have the warming amber glow of whisky in your hand too.
I’ve noticed the preference for brighter, fresher whiskies in summertime, and smokier, darker drams in winter. Being just two seasonal cycles into this delightful hobby, I’ve eschewed this form of habitual intake in favour of broadening my palate quickly. But this year as the temps get lower, I seem to be thinking more about peaty drams of an evening and enjoying them more as a result.
I’ve had decent experience now with peated whiskies, from the stalwart Caol Ila and Lagavulin, to the non-Islay Benromach and Springbank, to amalgamations of peated and unpeated expressions like Ardnamurchan. That said, my passion for peated whisky is not exactly ablaze. I don’t swoon about peated whisky — it’s a unique flavour to consume and I find that it accelerates my swan dive towards a hangover far quicker than other whiskies. Yet when I’m actually drinking peated whisky, I absolutely adore it.
Review
Ardbeg An Oa, The Ultimate Range, 46.6% ABV, official bottling
£39-44 and wide availability
Ardbeg. It’s almost becoming a dirty word in the land of whisky because, like it or not, they’re in business to make money. It goes against the unofficial sentiment of whisky as a respectful, community-fed hobby. Brands owned by intercontinental conglomerates with faceless management and a board of directors to feed, like Ardbeg who are owned by LVMH, have introduced lofty hikes in prices which has given rise to pitchfork levels of ire the length and width of our yellow-grassed land. Yes, it’s maybe a bit obvious to say, but the rising cost of some whisky recently has left a sour taste in many mouths.
With its big-budget quirky marketing and fumblings with non-fungible auction fodder, Ardbeg is a brand catering to those who enjoy the frivolous and fun nature of modern marketing. The Committee of Ardbeg — by which I mean those who have signed up to an email newsletter — have access to exclusive Committee bottlings, events and a voice that can sway the future direction of the business. I’m not sure just how much sway committee members have in reality, but regardless, the engaged people of the Ardbeg Committee are wedded to the brand, and as such have been vocal recently regarding the apparent drop in quality of Ardbeg whisky. The growing sentiment is that Ardbeg are compromising the smell and taste experience in favour of higher outputs to satiate demand for their Norse-mythology-titled bottles. That a cask of Ardbeg recently sold for £16m is evidence enough that demand for this Islay stalwart is peaking.
Ardbeg won “World Whisky of the Year” in 2008, ‘09 and ‘10. It seems that it was at this point that the brand started amping up the quirkiness, enjoying the freedom which big budgets facilitate. I’m certainly no critic of any distillery — I don’t have enough time served under the belt to have such opinions — but with a bit of Google research I see that Ardbeg really do occupy a unique position. They offer fun in exchange for money: you buy the whisky, they’ll provide the fun.
That said, it seems like the fun has been less and less of late. The landscape of whisky has shifted into the preference for making quick money over enjoying the product. The Fèis Ìle festival, once a gargantuan anecdote generator, has fallen short of the efforts auctioneers are making to turn opportunism into quick bucks with brass necks. “It’s not what it once was” comes the cry from veteran whisky yompers, and you can see why. The fun machine has sold its soul to the hand that feeds it: global demand.
What do I care, anyway? I’m not part of that troup of historic whisky exciters and I’m certainly no brand loyalist. (Lies! Just look at my shelf full of Ardnamurchan and slap my hand…) I’m part of a new wave of folk lunging like unmasked fencers to the next glowing orb of interest. Give me all the excitement, from anyone, just so long as it doesn’t cost the price of a round trip to Blackpool. I’m interested in all whisky and can see through the marketing bollocks because I don’t have decades of knowledge of how it used to be — I’m not wedded to anyone. I also work in a business that is heavy on marketing, so I have a bit of perspective into how it all works. But this is a good thing, because I can approach whisky from the perspective of how it tastes and smells now — not how it compares with a memory of how it used to taste and smell.
Ardbeg An Oa. An what? Part of the core range, this is a non-age stated whisky that is more expensive than the 5-year-old Wee Beastie — a youthful tongue snapper — but not as expensive as the 10-year-old. It’s also not as expensive as the “For Discussion” 8-year-old Committee bottling, which apparently polarised opinion. Other whiskies on offer, in order of price, are the Corryvreckan, the Uigeadail, the Ardcore Limited Edition, 19-year-old Traigh Bhan, and the 25-year-old that circles around the £1,000 mark. So the An Oa sits second-to-the-bottom on the scale of Ardbeg.
But Dougie, for goodness sake, is it any good, dammit?
Nose
Smoked red fruits, caramel sauce poured on a vanilla shortcrust tart. Struck match. A minty thread in the background, but menthol, not peppermints, and it creates an almost fresh sea air vibe.
Palate
Baked cherry pie, with burnt crust. Plastic, dense earth. Tropical juice. Newspapers. Little bursts of vanilla with pepper grains mixed through. Hint of vulcanised rubber on the finish, leaning into a kick of spice at the death.
The Dregs
So I’m a bit lucky in that I have a pal who has a cousin that works for the folk who own Ardbeg, and as such I had the opportunity to buy Ardbeg (and Glenmorangie) for a reduced rate. I took my opportunity late last year and bought a bottle of the Wee Beastie, the Uigeadail, the An Oa and the 10-year-old. I’ve since opened them all and finished the Uigeadail. I’ve also been handed the last gasp from a bottle of the 8-year-old “For Discussion” (thanks Wally), so you could say that I have a good opportunity to compare the spread of all the “affordable” Ardbeg going.
An interesting thing happens when drinking from a flight of Ardbeg, after about an hour.
I poured 25ml (measured) of each expression into 4 glasses, and for contrast I opened a new bottle of Cadenhead’s Warehouse Tasting Caol Ila 10 Years Old. At first, the dense fug of peat obscures most things, all the Ardbeg tasting very much the same. The Caol Ila by contrast is a lot more fruity — like oak-smoked red fruit compote — and very interesting. The Ardbeg not so much: it feels quite bitter and savoury. However, after a good while going back and forth between them, the smoke disappears. It removes itself from the equation: it’s like my palate registers that omni-note and shelves it, allowing me access to the flavours underneath that smoke blanket and thus separate the different Ardbeg expressions a bit easier.
Easier is a strange word to use, because it’s an exercise in endurance to get under the smoky blanket. The Wee Beastie starts to reveal its youth through new-makey like notes; fresh and vibrant. The 10 is a lot sharper than the 5. The “For Discussion” bottling, compared to these, is far more subtle and a touch more accessible — definitely more sweet, for that ashy sourness isn’t pronounced like 10. And then there’s the An Oa, with its darker colour and unknown aged contents.
It’s really good stuff. I like the additional sweetness/softness that the An Oa has over its compatriots, and I think it presents a more accessible, rounded whisky experience. The 10 is just far too ashy for me: it’s verging on the sour, which isn’t what I’m looking for. The Wee Beastie is still one of my favourites, just because of its edgy, almost visceral presentation; I’m guessing the new-makey note is something I quite enjoy. The 8-year-old “For Discussion” is great too, and it belies its 50.8% ABV presentation — it’s quaffable. But when all Ardbeg expressions are enjoyed together one thing is startlingly clear: there’s very little to separate them all.
Price-wise the An Oa can be found just under the £40 mark and, given the similarities with all the other Ardbeg offerings, I think it’s a good whisky and a good entry point into the Ardbeg sphere. The Wee Beastie remains my go-to Ardbeg, but if you fancy something with a little less nitrous, and a bit more sweetness, the An Oa is the one — especially at this beautiful point in our seasonal trajectory. Drinking Ardbeg with candles and pumpkins surrounding me is a joyful experience. However I have to also recognise that, having tried five Ardbeg whiskies now in side-by-side flights, the sentiment I’m left with is that any Ardbeg whisky would suffice — they’re all very much of a smoky muchness.
Score: 6/10
Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. DC
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