Ardbeg Wee Beastie

Nose: grain, peat, brine, oak, wet concrete, resin, pear, musty old attic, and bitter medicine. Water opens up some melon and stone fruit, burnt toffee perhaps. Palate: sweet and smoky, peaty of course, with undertones of vanilla, smoked meat, charcoal, ash, grain spirit. Smoky, peaty finish, slightly on the shorter side (for an Islay anyway).

You can smell the smoke as soon as it is set in front of you, but upon sipping, it is not a kick in the face. Smoke lingers in your mouth after.

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It’s been a beast of a week. And what should of been an Ardbeg every night of the week has not come to pass. Still, Wee Beastie is in the glass and I am pumped. Off the heels of a very solid open on Ardbeg 10, the Wee Beastie comes in at 5 y/o and offers a mix of ex-Bourbon and Olorosso casking. N: Sharp and punchy, the peat is a little damp and mulchy and gives a rotten wood on the bonfire kind of effect to the smokiness. Behind that though are some toffee, candy sweetness, stewed baking apples, a little sherbet like lemon sourness and an all encompassing salty-oily-peppery-wooded medley. The nose feels young, but it also has a lovely playfulness that is quite enticing. P: A little thin on arrival. Sweetness and black pepper add a surprising brightness to a sharp dilute lemon squash soaked peatyness. The smoke is salty but a little harsh. Sweetness develops with successive sips and leans towards stone fruits like lychee and nectarine with maybe some ginger-caramel. Theres nothing particularly special here, its on the aggressive side and if anything is a little underdeveloped. F: Surprisingly long. Oily, peppery, preserved lemon and mulchy peat. The smoke loses out in the finish. The name Wee Beastie and a 5 year age statement primed me into thinking this was going to be a vibrant, exciting version of the standard 10 year old, albeit a little less nuanced and refined. It’s not quite that in my mind. The nose is the stand out, theres plenty of big bold notes and lots to get excited about but from there it kind of goes down hill into mediocrity. The excellent notes of lemon, sea air influence and delicately perfumed smoke are just not there. A sweetness replaces these that makes the dram seem like a budget blend rather than a gatekeeper of whisky excellence (that I believe Ardbeg are regarded to be). This isn’t a wee beastie, its just a wee impersonation of something quite excellent. That said, its still good. Onwards we forge… Distiller whisky taste #224 [Pictured here with a Dicranurus monstrous, a real wee beastie. This is a trilobite, a type of marine arthropod from the Devonian Period. These horned monsters are found in Morocco, Oklahoma, and New York. This ones from Morocco. The incredible spines used to be thought of as adaptations for fighting but the position behind the delicate exposed eyes makes this unlikely. They were almost certainly a defensive mechanism against predators and an anti sinking aid for the soft sea floor mud they lived and fed on. A recent hypotheses has speculated that the spines hosted organisms called bryozoans (similar to corals), meaning the spines were like a palaeozoic ghille suit. What a wee beastie!] Ardbeg running scores: Ardbeg 10: 4.25/5 Wee Beastie: 3/5