It is a bizarre smell that welcomes you, obsolete for an Ardbeg: the full-bodied and brackish peat is there, but tamed by a strong sweet component. Red fruits, green apple, caramel, vanilla and honey mix with acrid and medicinal smoke, alternating the nostrils in a curious dance of aromas. However, we are far from the calmness of An Oa, for example, the peat remains predominant, fiercely smoky and moist, but it declines in unusual sweet and fruity tones, dictated by the influence of the pinot. The palate reveals the strength of the whisky, with the alcohol content well present at the mouth, together with a very salty and peaty roar with a good peppery touch. But again, a sweet and cuddly profile hides under the muscles of burnt wood, bringing deep caramel notes, almost like sugared almonds, together with ripe fruit (many cherries, then raspberries and peach) and honey. Caribbean cigar tobacco background. It is a continuous alternation of the two souls, who overlap without ever amalgamating really, in an eternal conflict over who should prevail. In the end, the sweetness comes out defeated, rather long with pepper, smoked seaweed, sea salt and burnt wood. The balance is precarious, the two souls of the whisky never seem to reconcile, but it is precisely the conflict that makes drinking varied and fun, a variation on the Ardbeg theme that is delicious and curious, an imbalance that perhaps for some is a defect, for me it's a bonus.