Ardbeg 1998 - Still Young

99? Cool. You did not mention that Still Young is 8 years old. It always pleases me to see "young" whiskies receive very high scores. As far as I am concerned, years and maturity have so very little to do with one another. Maturity is all about the good taste and judgment of the master distiller as to when the flavours of the whisky are just right.

Don't know whether I'll ever get the chance to taste Ardbeg Still Young, but I'd certainly like to.

Funnily, I have come across this bottle a number of times over the years but never chose to acquire it. Seems that I was terribly wrong... I greatly enjoyed reading your notes and I agree: young Ardbeg whiskies often hold their ground towards older expressions. Lovely stuff!

Very enjoyable review. I too had a fascination before enjoying the item except mine is Laphroaig. But since I've had a few of the lineup. It has now added Ardbeg.

@Victor Thank you once again, my friend, for pointing out important facts that I have an uncanny ability of leaving out from my reviews.

Yes, this is an 8 year old whisky and I, for one, am a huge proponent of taste over age. The Campbeltown beauty Kilkerran Work In Progress is a testament to that. Started off as a 5 year old and is now around 8-9 years old.

However, the danger, in my opinion, of letting distillers release NAS expressions is now they can charge what ever they like simply on the back of marketing rather than the true rarity of the product.

I´ll second @Victor´s and your opinion - for me high scores are the result of the intrinsic qualities and composition of a Whisky. Age sometimes helps to add a certain level of complexity but what really counts is nose and taste (and fun...). There are great examples of young and excellent bottles - Caol Ila, Kilkerran, a certain 6yo Glenrothes from Adelphi..

@tabarakRazvi, even discounting a potentially steep price-to-age-and-scarcity ratio of the whisky, the really tricky thing about 'buying quality' with all these new No Age Statement special releases is that when the brand is hot and the number of bottles being released is relatively small, you might have to make the decision about whether to pay the big price without having the benefit of reading a few reviews. If you wait, you might miss out entirely on getting any. And that hot new release just might be THE ONE BEST WHISKY YOU WILL EVER TASTE...or it might not even be one you like.