Ardbeg Uigeadail

Nose: Tart and sour quickly greet the nose. It is a lemon lime thing: almost a sour mix. This tart note dominates with a little bit of earth and peat seeping in around it with a healthy bit of lemon rind. As you dig deeper you get to the earthy sea salt that is typical Ardbeg – but it is very hidden. Most sour batch of Uigeadail I have tried. Seems to lack the power of the others. The peat, smoke, and earth tones are there, but they are really suppressed by the sour lemon. This has almost no peat tone compared with the others. Also very little smoke – it is super high in the nose and very thin. Everything seems all jumbled together. There is sweetness here . . . but nothing really stands out.
With water: more lemon and less fruit – as if that were possible!

Taste: Artificial sweeter and tart apples. There is some peat and smoke in the background, but you have to hunt. Very sweet (saccharin) candied coated peat. Now the salt and peat take over: very sharp and intense on the mouth. No much change with water

Finish: Huge traditional Ardbeg intake of breath . . . this is more of a bomb going off! It is more of an explosion then a tidal wave. You are left with sand, salt, peat, and radioactivity! There is some fruit, peat, a bit of wood, but mostly brine: hard to get much else over all the salt! For me the powerful finish saves this from a 70’s score. More wood with water. It almost goes down in score a bit.

Complexity, Balance: Least complex and least balanced of the night. Everything seems to mush together. The sour and sweet stand out in very weird ways. It is super sour on the nose, and then super sweet on the tongue . . . go figure.

Aesthetic experience: Very light in color for an Uigeadail. Very close to the L10 151

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