Ardbeg Hypernova
2022 Committee Release | 51% ABV
Well, how weak my will is.
Despite the ludicrous price, the cringey marketing, the recent bout of mediocre releases and the generally poor sentiment for anything non-core Ardbeg, I’ve bought a bottle.
The only tepid justification I can level is that the majority of this bottle is for my club and that I’m still a die-hard fan of Ardbeg’s spirit. Ultimately, this is a curiosity buy - certainly nothing I intend to drink a whole bottle of at the asking price, but something I can justify as a morbid curiosity for sampling. We all have our guilty pleasures. Rom-coms, cheap chocolate and crisps, or just gratuitous violence - I like Adesanya to beat Pereira by TKO in UFC 281.
The point is, life isn’t all about fine dining and French arthouse films 24/7 - it would lose the luxury if it was. Embracing the little joys that fall into mediocrity including our small guilty pleasures fuel most of our serotonin output for the majority of our lives. Catching a good show with our loved ones, getting an ice cream while out for a walk; whatever it may be, these are the flavourful chromaticisms that make our days sparkle.
Whisky is the same, not just in that it forms many of these small cherished moments, but in the quality of the thing itself. There are notes in whiskies that we know most would probably call faults - a slight cheesiness here, too much oak or too little maturation there. Whatever it is, sometimes these things just work for us even when our peers might deride something for its faults.
Think of it like jazz; as long as someone plays enough of the right notes on the right beats, the funky in-between bits are bonuses not detractors. Then again, not everyone likes jazz. It’s one of the reasons I’m not a great supporter of peer averaged scores on sites such as Whiskybase, as I’ve touched on in other reviews, everyone has their own palate and preferences, which means a number produced by some algorithm fed off the masses is utterly meaningless without more information. Don’t get me wrong, I use Whiskybase all the time, but generally for extra information about bottles and to read other people’s tasting notes. If enough people use enough similar key words and phrases to trigger my interest, I’ll consider hunting a bottle down.
Anyway, you’ll see the relevance this digression has when we get to the actual review. The point is, reviews aren’t just subjective as a function of reviewer variation, they’re deeply subjective depending on how they’re interpreted for different palates. Which notes people like or dislike depending on their guilty pleasures if you will. This is one of the reasons, again, that I attempt to embed some objective language into my descriptions. Anyone can use romantic language to make some pretty diabolical flavours sound good depending on interpretation, whereas a chemical descriptor is about as fixed as we’re likely to come across.
Scores are at least as unwieldy. The standard scapegoat here is that scores are only a reflection of personal enjoyment, but as reviewers we know it’s never really that simple. We take an automatic responsibility for people’s buying decisions and enjoyment of their hobby depending on how we rate products, and that should be taken with some measure of gravity.
The trouble is trying to project our interpretation of what is physically there in our noses and mouths as a metric that should then fit as many Gaussian curves for the general public’s metrics as possible. Again, this is why I frequently feel the need to qualify what I mean and how I enjoy certain aspects of whisky with such detail and frequency. I deeply don’t want to misguide anyone with some communication breakdown.
Part of the reason I think this causes me so much grief is I come from a background of rating and judging beers. In the beer world, we have a structural body for judging called the Beer Judge Certification Program, or BJCP. As well as having a comprehensive list of style descriptions and explanations, there’s also an organisation providing a level of sensory training through which participants can become assessors at various levels: beer server, certified cicerone, advanced cicerone and master cicerone. The premise of these organisations is to know beers by their style and when it comes time to judge them, judge them explicitly by their style. A judge’s personal enjoyment of a beer is entirely secondary to evaluating it as objectively as possible in accordance with the beer’s style guideline. This makes it clear to others using those judgements how the beer should be - not just whether it’s good or not, but how well it falls within certain parameters.
it seems kitty would name it Arbeg Ambivalence
It’s a facet of judging which both wine and whisky fundamentally lack; for real blind judging to be done properly (blind judging being the only valid method for anything like objective evaluations) the judges can have very little information about the product. You can’t tell a judge to evaluate a blind Springbank sample as a mildly peated Campbeltown whisky, since that immediately informs the judge it’s one of three distilleries, unduly influencing their preconceptions before tasting.
Similarly, with wine, you can’t ask them to judge a sample in accordance with provenance appropriate style parameters since that immediately gives information that’ll also limit what the wine can be and influence opinion. As a result, a huge degree of interpretation is left to the judges which can give rise to significant variation between their scores. In many competitions, a maximum spread of scores is tolerated before adjustment must be made. This usually looks like the head judge for a panel adjudicating scores and guiding other judges’ opinions to set some amount of consensus.
Of course, this tampers with the mechanism of having panel judging in the first place and undermines the integrity of much of the process. An article from The Guardian in 2013 from the wine world touches on this and other scoring issues. The upshot is that most competitions are fundamentally flawed and the results from them functionally mean very little.
So, on that cheery note, shall we dive in?
Review
Ardbeg Hypernova, Committee Release 2022, 51% ABV
AUD$350 & limited availability
Ardbeg have hardly primed themselves going into this. Last year’s Ardcore release was lukewarm at best, drastically overpriced and IMHO, mediocrely achieved the roasted malt mocha tones promised compared to the Glenmorangie Signet from the same stables.
I didn’t even bother tracking down the Fermutation bottling since a few trusted palates indicated it really wasn’t worth the effort. As much as I’m an Ardbeg fanboy, the marketing team are doing their best to ruin the brand’s reputation. Still, I hold out hope. Unlike some, I loved the balance and structure of the 8 year old For Discussion so much that I bought multiple bottles. Again, horses for courses.
As much as the marketing around the Ardbeg Hypernova is clearly hype driven, the idea of a super heavily peated Ardbeg with no gimmicky cask finishing genuinely made my heart rate pick up a notch when I first heard the news. Let’s see if that was justified.
Nose
Somebody at the warehouse made a mistake and accidentally blended some very good mezcal with whisky! Seriously, this is riddled with hot hard plastics, volatile new-make fusel oils and aldehydes (acetaldehyde and cooked pear notes), bicycle inner tube, coastal tide pools plus crustaceans, lime juice/oils, capers and gherkins. With time in glass comes the more expected tar, TCP and bromine antiseptic tones, then hot rubber and smoked almonds.
Palate
It’s much better than the nose, more distinguishably malt whisky and quite decidedly Ardbeg. I start to see a better resemblance to something like the Ardbeg 10 with more lemon oil/lime juice and medicinal smoke, various heterocyclic groups with good tar, camphor, creosote and ink. Then touches of sweet grisette maltiness, brilliant ashes, black liquorice and white pepper. It is indeed stunningly peaty, but with every sip there’s a bit of a new-make slap in the face that is still very mezcal. Some delicate traces of white stone fruit on the swallow.
The Dregs
This is good. The finish is long with the phenols outlasting most other flavours, especially on the palate, and leaving you feeling like you’ve definitely had whisky.
To try and find some bearings for rating this I pulled out a sample bottle of the standard Ardbeg 10 and the Ardcore, which I also remember thinking was extremely young and generally wasn’t a fan of. The 10, naturally, crushed this like it does so many other whiskies but it did highlight the shared core DNA. Relative to the Ardcore, there are major differences - the Hypernova has distinctively more new-make notes. I’m struggling to mark this with any real sense of confidence. I like mezcal as mezcal, drinking it when I’m in the mood for that specific thing.
The palate is typically Ardbeg though and I admit to being smitten with the sheer brashness of the phenolics and supporting distillery character. Other people will compare this to the Octomore series’, though I think ultimately that’s an apples-and-oranges false equivalence; the difference in sourced peat and production methodology give two drastically different profiles.
Ultimately this score is even more subjective than usual. If you don’t like new-make notes or mezcal then this is possibly a 1/10. If you like mezcal and aren’t bothered by obvious youth, as well as wanting a phenolic explosion then this is arguably a 7-8/10. For me the nose is important and we shouldn’t forget either this is one of the most expensive annual releases we’ve seen from Ardbeg.
In any case, I will warn this is a dram that needs plenty of time in glass. I suggest covering a pour with a lid and letting it sit for 30 minutes or longer before even beginning evaluations. I also didn’t much enjoy playing with water; it softened the new-make on the nose but destroyed the palate experience. Factoring all of that in, I feel this justifies the compromised score… just.
Score: 5/10 TK
Calder’s Review
Ardbeg Hypernova, Committee Release 2022, 51% ABV
AUD$350 & limited availability
Nose
Peated new-make, extremely youthful however not exactly sharp. Fresh citrus, herbs and a lime-dressed gin and tonic, or perhaps a tequila reposado? If I was distracted enough I may not have even picked this nose as a malt whisky in a blind tasting. Time in the glass dampens the smoke and highlights the sweetness, a transition from burnt cigarettes to candy cigarettes.
Palate
Starting to get more classic Ardbeg savoury notes with smoked mussels and pan grease. Lacking the richer sweetness however and opting for more sugary candy, again, more reminders of the potential youthfulness of this whisky. Makrut lime and grapefruit upon further sips and the slightest hints of sea salt on an abrupt and surprisingly gentle finish. Not thin or sharp in texture but missing some of the heft and viscosity of most Ardbegs.
The Dregs
I can’t help but feel the pang of missed opportunity with this bottling. I’ve enjoyed past releases of the Supernova and while we can’t expect the Ardbeg of old anymore, we really should expect better than what the Hype-nova-train delivers, or perhaps fails to do so.
This strikes me more as a newer distilleries work-in-progress type of whisky, not necessarily bad components but simply hasn’t had the time in oak to become a full whisky. A few years and the hefty price tag would well… still be frankly ridiculous.
But what can I say? I’m an Ardbeg fanboy and the loyalty from a long-lost series of consistent and excellent releases has held me eternally hostage: “What if this next one is great? Could this be the next Ardbog or Dark Cove? I mean it’s Ardbeg!” An entire herd’s worth of wool is plastered on my eyes as I fail to sometimes see the price for what it is.
This whisky has shone a little more light where reality stands however. I may not guarantee I won’t blindly buy whatever else they bottle next, but perhaps I’ll falter for a second, or waver the next time. That would be some level of maturity at least, sadly of which isn’t to be found in this whisky.
Score: 5/10 CD