Jose-Massu-Espinel
Ardbeg Rollercoaster Committee Release
Single Malt — Islay, Scotland
Reviewed
October 2, 2023 (edited October 4, 2023)
Ardbeg Rollercoaster is one of those legendary committee releases, a bottle that is known for being rare and full of a background story.
Actually Rollercoaster has different whiskies from the first ten years that Ardbeg re-opened under their new administration. I am also pretty sure that this single malt has whiskies from the previous committee releases, making it a "Rollercoaster" of different Ardbeg expressions.
Bottled at 57.3%abv.
On the nose, it has the crazy notes you expect, but it feels like it could be better. A pair of new socks is the first note i get. Then red chilli. Wasabi and bacon. It has the typical Ardbeg herbal notes. It resembles a flu medicine called "Lemonflu" that exists in my country (it is like a lemon night quill remedy). Red berries appeared from somewhere.
On the palate i have the same critic, something is missing to make this great. Sweet and spicy. Starts with impalpable sugar and then red chilli. It is exactly like a sweet treat called "Alfajor" which has no proper translation to english. Please google it and you will know what i am talking about here. Not very complex.
Aftertaste gave me a nuclear wasabi explosion; herbal notes and ashes. Nothing else. Not bad, but nothing too exciting.
Overall, this is far from the thing i expected it to be. The sweetness here feels disonant to the spiciness. It is not super peaty nor smokey. Herbal stuff, spicy stuff, sweet stuff, but not in a balanced and interesting way. It is not complex at all. Really underwhelming. Don't get me wrong, this is not a bad whisky by any means, it is just not superb as i expected, due to the rarity and price of it. My score for this very normal dram, is 88 over 100. It should have been better.
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