Ok, brace yourselves for an incredible story. Back in the 1990s (it sounds like a long time ago nowadays), the whisky investments were starting to rise. Of course, scammers were on the rise as well. This is the story of a Gibraltar based company called Pearldene and Hamilton Spirit Management, who offered customers casks of a new distillery called "Grandtully" and also "Gleneagles". Both distilleries never existed and the company received at least 1.7 million pounds for those whisky casks that were a nothing more than a scam. When the authorities found out, they started chasing the criminals, and they attempted to send bottles from other existing distilleries to the scammed investors in order to hide what they have done. The Scottish Whisky Association managed to retrieve this fake bottles (actually the liquid was real but not from Grandtully nor Gleneagles) and they re-labeled them with the proper distillery names, so the scammed investors at least could recover some whisky for their troubles. Well, one of those bottles came into my hands, an ARDBEG, called Ard Bog, bottle No. 28 of 377, part of the "GREAT WHISKY SWINDLE" of the 90s. A true piece of history. Bottled at 46%abv, this is a 10yo expression of Ardbeg, but from the 1990s, when Louis Vuitton was not yet the owner of the destillery. Pale straw color. On the nose, this is a very interesting whisky. It starts with a crazy note of a pair of cotton socks, plants / moss; dust. It smells like a hospital, creolin, medicinal notes. A pair of Converse shoes, black thick pepper and lemoncello. After a sip, the aroma changed into oysters, oregano, vanilla ice cream and brie cheese. Air freshener. Amazing and crazy stuff here. On the palate, it is delicious. It is a perfect mixture between a vanilla ice cream and black pepper. Cotton. On the second sip i got white chocolate, apricot and some maritime notes. Sweet and salty. Aftertaste is wonderful as well. Sawdust, black pepper, mint and salt. Super long finish. Overall, this was a fantastic Ardbeg, that we can consider it to be the 10yo expression from 33 years ago. A super rounded, heavily peated whisky with crazy tasting and aroma notes. I honestly believe that Ardbeg was better than today, specially with all the new releases that lack some depth lately. My score for this beauty is 92 over 100, and the story behind it is really fascinating.