Ardbeg Wee Beastie

So much sweet wood smoke, black pepper for days, finished with savory pine resin.

Sweet peated. Spice, chocolate, fire smoke and wood. Lingering pepper heat and sticky treacle.

Absolutely delicious. The nose is a little sharp but smooths out with the classic sea salt, smoke and pepper but with raspberries and vanilla joining in. The palate is Ardbeg through and through, with welcome additions of peach, vanilla, chocolate and mint with just the slightest burn. Recommended.

N: Earthy Ardbeg peat smoke, as one would expect. It's such that I have to wonder if aging (or lack thereof, in this case) has any effect on that particular note. Moving on... Green apples, rich soil, ripe cherries, grilled beef, smoked and grilled pineapple, chalk, boiled and salted vegetables, stone fruits... It comes back a little different each time, tending to alternate between sweet/fruity and savory/smoky. P: Smoked chocolate, rich vanilla cream, coffee. Sweet with a sticky bread malt thing going on. Dark red fruit is there, but fairly deep in the background. Salty with a touch of bitterness. Rich, heavy, oily mouthfeel. Finish is a bit unassuming with some oak tannin and maybe a hint of cinnamon, but it builds after a few sips to a lingering spicy burn that gets fairly intense. Milk chocolate hangs in and adds character and depth to the spice. Look, there's nothing wrong with this whisky. It's quite good, actually. But it's an Ardbeg, and that carries certain expectations. It's got to be incredibly difficult for a firm like Ardbeg to create a new entry level - how do you keep your reputation while offering a product at a cheaper price than anything else already in your lineup? How do you cut cost without cutting quality and damaging the brand? Exceptionally difficult questions to answer well. Whoever makes those decisions for Ardbeg has chosen to favor quality over cost, which I think no one can exactly fault them for. But I'll try - $15 less than the Uigeadail, for example, doesn't sway me. That is a better, more complex dram and the price difference is not enough to push me down to this Wee Beastie. Ardbeg has hit the mark on quality, but not cost. If this was a $30 bottle, you wouldn't be able to find it anywhere. But it's a $50 bottle. It might be a little better than the average $50 bottle, but not better than the $55 and $65 bottles under the Ardbeg brand. So it's hard to understand what the target market is for this dram. I can't imagine buying it again because I will almost always spend the extra couple of bucks to upgrade. Maybe it gets a relatively steep discount in a couple years... One can hope. Business and pricing aside, this is quite tasty and worth trying at least once. It's bright and lively, but still a beast in the Ardbeg tradition. There's not an off note in it - perfectly executed.

Down.