Ardbeg 10 - Review and Tasting Notes

The Story

For some reason, I have always seen Ardbeg as something of a rival to my beloved Laphroaig.

This is ridiculous, I know.

It's the many similarities but critical differences that do it to me.

They're both Islay distilleries that produce an unabashedly peaty malt that avoids being one dimensional.  Key similarity.  A key difference is the "type" of peatiness, with Ardbeg's being the more smoky and dry campfire type and Laphroaig's being the more wet, moist and drippy type.

Laphroaig Cairdeas 2015 Review and Tasting Notes

The Story

Ahhh, yes.  Laphroaig.

Laphroaig was and always will be my first true love in scotch.  It was a warm summer day... okay, I won't go there.  But Laphroaig's 10 Year offering was the first scotch I truly fell in love with, and it remains among my favorites and among the best values in scotch.

Naturally, I consider myself a friend of Laphroaig, and naturally, I have to get my hands on Laphroaig's yearly Cairdeas offering.

"Cairdeas" means friend in Gaelic, and each year, Laphroaig's master distillers craft the annual Cairdeas malt.  Typically, they put a spin of some sort on it.

In 2015, it was Laphroaig's 200th anniversary, so the goal for the Cairdeas offering was to craft a dram much like it might have been made 200 years ago.

Three Open Bottles, What To Do, What To Do?

I keep my bottles of scotch on top of the fridge.  Well, all my liquor goes there, but it just so happens that most of it is scotch.

Over the last six months, since I've been blogging, my scotch tasting has gone into an absolute frenzy.  I have scoured stores and the internet for good deals on bottles to taste and to review.

It got expensive.

I also arrived at a - great! - problem to have:

I had tons and tons of scotch.

However, scotch doesn't last forever.  Once opened, the length of time before the bottle starts to lose flavor is inversely related to how much of the bottle has been drunk.  Put differently, the less there is in the bottle, the more quickly it'll go bad.