Many whisky commentators today make reference to cult whiskies or distilleries with cult followings. As best as I can tell, such references really didn’t exist until 1997. Then Ardbeg was reborn.
Ardbeg has a weight, a brand, a persona, that is bigger than itself. It has a reputation for huge, bold, peaty whiskies, and its name travels so far and with such reverence that you could be forgiven for thinking it’s the biggest distillery on Islay. In truth, it’s actually one of the smaller ones. With just one pair of stills churning away, its potential annual production capacity is just a tick over 1.1 million litres. But as we all know, size doesn’t matter. It’s what you do with it that counts…
