Transitional Patience

"Oh, Andy loved geology. I imagine it appealed to his meticulous nature. An ice age here, million years of mountain building there. Geology is the study of pressure and time. That's all it takes, really. Pressure, and time." - Ellis Boyd "Red" Redding

Pressure and time, two words that kept swirling around the ole noggin as I contemplated my most recent pours of Ardbeg's Uigeadail (pronounced oog-ah-doll). Bottled at 54.2% ABV and without chill filtration, Uigeadail took me on quite the journey of self-discovery, far more than any of the other malts adorning my shelf.

Pressure. I have long loved Ardbeg's standard offering - a stoutly peated 10-year old that commonly retails in the $50 range in my neck of the woods. Sitting alongside the 10-year old in Ardbeg's year-round lineup are a handful of non-age stated Single Malts, all of which tend to retail for 25% to 60% more than their age-stated sibling. So how does a producer justify and convince the consumer to spend more cash on a whiskey that has less label provenance? The answer is two-fold - put a quality whiskey in the bottle and then carpet bomb the whiskey world with marketing fodder. Seemingly from the start, this strategy paid off for Ardbeg as the whiskey nerds of the Internet loved Uigeadail out of the gate. Cementing its reputation, Uigeadail's marketing portfolio was handed a crown jewel when in 2009, Jim Murray’s Whisky Bible named Ardbeg Uigeadail ‘World Whisky of the Year’ praising its “utter silky brilliance” and “complexity on a level only a handful of distilleries in the world can even dream of reaching.” From that point onwards, Ardbeg had no problem selling bottles of Uigeadail.

Time. I resisted the Uigeadail pressure for a number of years. Blog after blog, YouTube review after YouTube review hailed the spirit's awesomeness, yet I remained fiscally stubborn. 'Why would I spend nearly twice as much on an unknown Ardbeg than I do my beloved 10-year Ardbeg?'. As the years rolled by, my resistance remained steadfast, but so too did the increasing marketing and peer pressure vouching for Uigeadail's worthiness. The tipping-point, where the friction of my resistance was overcome by the stress of my curiosity, was when my local ABC marked bottles of Uigeadail down from $89.99 to $71.99. Succumbing, the long-denied bottle was finally brought home and thus began the adventure.

That purchase was made way back in 2017 and from that day to this, an important life-lesson, in regard to whiskey at least, was learned: the importance of patience and keeping an open mind when sampling a new whiskey. I journal my initial impressions of every whiskey I purchase and Uigeadail's initial entry tips towards that of being underwhelmed:

Peat on the nose, but less than Ardbeg 10. It could be the sherry casks used here, but the nose has a more herbal sense to it than 10 year. Taste - the peat is definitely there, but nowhere near 10 year. Also, there is a medicinal taste and dry finish that are quite different than the 10. The 10 is more sweet and less dry on the taste/finish. It is a good malt, but thus far, I enjoy Arbeg 10 a wee bit more.

After my first two pours of Uigeadail, I was so ho-hum towards the malt that I was contemplating a list of friends to whom I could gift the gently-used bottle. Lazily, I stuffed the bottle into a dusty corner of the cabinet and forgot about it for over a year.

Rediscovering the bottle and begrudgingly pouring another dram on an idle weeknight was perplexing. My pour that night was far better, far more enjoyable than I had recalled. Subsequent pours yielded more of the same; I was enjoying this malt, quite a lot in fact. One night I sat down with two pours - Ardbeg's 10-year and Uigeadail - to taste side-by-side. Doing so helped illuminate and zero-in on the genesis of my initial disappointment with Uigeadail. As I said earlier, I had spent years exclusively enjoying Ardbeg 10-year. As a result, Ardbeg 10-year became the standard, the very definition of what Ardbeg is and produces; the 10-year tastes just as Ardbeg should taste ... or so I thought. Uigeadail is however, by design and rightfully so, a very different malt than the 10-year. This difference I surmise is what led to my quick dismissal of Uigeadail in lieu of the 10-year. Which brings me back to my whiskey life-lesson - if a newly acquired malt should ever fail to impress straight out of the gate, rather than immediately dismiss it, allow it time to impress and earn a spot in your rotation. Time, oxidation, personal mood, preconceptions, environment; many external variables impact the impression a whiskey delivers which is why it's important to spread your enjoyment of any one bottle over the course of weeks, months, and yes, even years.

So what are my current tasting notes of Uigeadail? Well that first bottle as you can see by the photo above is almost half-finished now. The Malt Nerds claim Uigeadail's quality has decreased through the years, but I can offer no insight on that as my frugal resistance kept me from buying a bottle until 2017. What I can say is in regard to newer/current bottlings - if you enjoy peated malts from Islay, there is a very good chance you will enjoy Uigeadail - the lack of a peaty sledgehammer punch to the tongue is more than compensated for with a sherry/barrel complexity not commonly found in Islay malts:

Nose
Campfire, pine needles, cedar wood. Gentle vanilla and raisiny-sugar with the addition of some water.

Taste
Immense, coating, a surprising spiciness, peppery yielding to a candy sweetness. Smoke obviously, but not as smokey as Ardbeg and/or Laphroaig's 10-year offering. I feel water improves the taste, muting the alcohol punch and bringing out more fruity sweetness and vanilla. There is also a flickering impression of espresso for me. The espresso is not constant nor lasting, but like catching the occasional lyric of a familiar song from a passing car, it's certainly recognizable for me. The tail-end of the sip leading into the finish is forcefully reminiscent of walking past a cigar bar.

Finish
Long, smokey, pine forest. A drying sensation after a few moments as well, though not severe. Some humans are endowed with 'legs for days', well this malt is endowed with a finish for days. You will go to bed and possibly wake in the morning with remnants of smoke on your palate courtesy of this malt.

General Notes / Overall
Adding water to this malt reduces the peat punch (think bog fire reduced to smoldering fire) but increases the fruitiness on the nose. This phenomenon does not carry over to the taste however, the peat level remains the same and is entirely delightful to me.

I wrote a great deal about Ardbeg's 10-year offering and tasting that alongside Uigeadail really is an enjoyable and enlightening experience. The 10-year's peat level is analogous to Spinal Tap's 11 - it is big, bold, and tends to dominate the experience. Uigeadail dials down the peat to 7 or 8, but it's also of a different ilk - smoldering vs the 10-year's billowing. As for sweetness, the 10-year is significantly sweeter, from start to finish, than Uigeadail. These changes in peat and sweetness between the two allows Uigeadail to explore subtleties that would not be possible in the 10-year and I imagine therein lies precisely why Uigeadail retails for $20-$35 more than the 10-year. I have a hunch that a greater variety of barrels as well as a more dutiful attention to detail in blending those barrels is required when batching Uigeadail.

Truly, if you love Islay peated malts, both the 10-year and Uigeadail deserve to be sampled, ideally side-by-side if you can swing it. For my shelf, I see keeping a bottle of each available, but the 10-year will be reached for more often than the Uigeadail; the Uigeadail's complexity deserves some intentional contemplation whereas the 10-year can be casually enjoyed which satisfies my malt requirement for most nights. If however there can only be one for your shelf, choose the 10-year for a peat sledgehammer a la a Schwarzenegger action flick or the Uigeadail for a Fred and Ginger peat soiree.

Uigeadail (left) and 10-Year (right)