Whisky Connosr
Menu
Buy Whisky Online

Ardbeg Corryvreckan

Travelling from Cambeltown to Islay

0 991

@Robert99Review by @Robert99

22nd Aug 2015

0

Ardbeg Corryvreckan
  • Nose
    22
  • Taste
    23
  • Finish
    24
  • Balance
    22
  • Overall
    91

Show rating data charts

Distribution of ratings for this: brand user

At first the nose is quite surprising with is dichotomous personnality. It is very Ardbeg with its big charred smoke, peat and seasalt; but the big hay, white oak, wet grass by the sea (not seaweed) and tarred hemp rope (to use the expression so well putted by @Fiberfar) is clearly Longrow in my mind. With time the Ardbeg Vanilla is showing. With more air, I have more medecinal herbs, a bit of cardamon and some french oak woodspices in the back. After half an hour, something wonderfull happened, all the flavors kind of melt together finding a good balance. I then have some white and black pepper on a more smokey typical Ardbeg nose with a more prononce than usual sour note.

The smoke is huge on the palate! The more air it got the more ashy it becomes. I love ashy whisky! The hay and hemp are there but they are integrated, though they are more defined than the fruity and sweety background. All those flavors are travelling on a continuous thread of vanilla spiced with ginger. The flavors are really expanding from the front of your mouth to your throat and up to your nose.

Wow, the finish is long, intense and offers you new flavours! The peat is just explosing becoming meaty! A classical iodine joined the smoke with some medecinal menthol and this finish last for ever.

Conclusion, on the first sip, I would have rate this scotch at 84, subtracting 2 points for his lack of balance. In about half an hour of hair, it changes a lot! I would give to the last sip a 91. It could have been close to 94 but it becomes too integrated lacking some definition and reducing the complexity. I am expecting this bottle to settle like my last sip, giving the big role to the smoke and the ash. In that way, I understand why all the people are saying that it is more of a real Ardbeg than the Uigeadail for which I find sometime that the finsh covered the best part of the whisky. The best comment I can do is that I am now craving for another pour of it. So I think I will let you go and have another taste of it just to check a few points and to...

Find where to buy Ardbeg whisky

Nose:

Body:

Palate:

Related Ardbeg reviews

Read more Ardbeg Corryvreckan reviews

9 comments

@Nozinan
Nozinan commented

So? How was that second dram?

Sounds like a great batch you picked up. I'm sure there will be more than a few Connosrs wondering which batch this is.

Great review!

9 years ago 0

@Victor
Victor commented

@Robert99, I am very glad that you got a good bottle of Corryvreckan. Yes, you really do need to furnish us with the bottling code in order to identify the batch. They are far from "all the same" from batch to batch. If my first bottle of Corryvreckan had been as good or better than the other Ardbegs I was buying in 2010/2011 I would probably have stored up several bottles of Corryveckan favourites from that era. As it was, my first bottle was something I did not like at all for MANY months. Eventually it lost most of the sour lemon citrus which was ALL you could taste of it for about a year, maybe longer. I grew to like even that bottle over time, when the other typical Ardbeg flavours eventually began to show themselves, 18 months later. Our resident Ardbeg aficionado, @Nock, considered that particular batch of Corryvreckan, L 11 012, to be the worst Corryvreckan he has tasted yet.

I am no shrinking violet about big flavours, including peat, smoke, brine, etc. Ardbeg Supernova and Bruichladdich Octomore are my ideas of great whisky. But when 100% of your early experience of a particular whisky is crappy, it is very hard to trust the name on the label. For years I read wistfully about how much many people were loving their Corryveckan. I thought to myself, "I wonder how much they would enjoy Corry if their experience were only of this L 11 012." Well, @Nock tells me that I also have stored up his second lowest rated Corryvreckan. Not great. It is more than a bit of a bummer when you get the bum bottle of a great product. (@Nock, I am still mortified about that bad bottle of George Dickel # 12 I insisted that you buy.)

So, Robert, enjoy your decent bottle of Corryvreckan!

9 years ago 0

@Robert99
Robert99 commented

@Nozinan, @Victor First, let me reassure you, it was half an hour of air. I don't let hairs grow in my whisky!

About the batch number, I don't know why but my first paragraph, where I gave the batch number, was cut out from my review. I was saying that I had trouble to read the code because they printed it straight on the glass wart at the bottom of the bottle. Here is what I was able to read, it is not in the same format as usual, so the number is L601 10/11/2014 then on a second line 1401 3 16:36.

9 years ago 0

@Robert99
Robert99 commented

@Paddockjudge Thank you for the infos but I have to say that I bought this bottle in Maryland.

9 years ago 0

@Robert99
Robert99 commented

@Paddockjudge I didn't want anybody to think that it was a canadian bottle, but you are right, it is a great site and that was the point to your comment. And now I have a question for you. I have a bottle of Uigeadail with the following code L13 058 16:28 6M. There is a code close to that one on the site, L13 058 4:45 6 ML for a Uigie bottled on February 27 2013 for the Luxembourg. Could those two codes correspond to the same batch but being different to indicate differents destinations? Or a different warehouse? Or ... And is the code of my Corry bottle the result of a new coding politic?

9 years ago 0

@paddockjudge
paddockjudge commented

@Robert99, I am inclined to think that the codes are the same, but I am guessing. The only detectable difference being the "L" omitted from the production line identifier "6ML" is probably an error,omission or blemish.

Ardbeg, being an incredibly popular distillery, is most like allocating all of their current production and most, if not all, of their future book. This, being accurate, could easily explain how bottles from the same batch or same production date might find their way to retailers' shelves on different continents.

It is good to know that some high quality bottles of C'veckan have made their way to DC/Baltimore.

9 years ago 0

@Nock
Nock commented

@Robert99, I also picked up a bottle of Corry on my last visit to @Victor. Here is my batch number: L50127 10/11/2014; 14011823 16:35

I am 99.9% certain that it is the same batch as yours. Check your bottle again to see if those numbers could fit. The date is the same (10/11/20114) and the time is one minute off (yours) 16:36 and (mine) 16:35. The rest of the new numbers are not as important in my opinion.

As to your batch of Uigeadail, I had that same batch and enjoyed it. That is the old batch code style (which they just changed). The only difference is the time your bottle was filled and the time the Luxembourg bottle was filled. My bottled said L13 058 13:13 6ML. The L13 is the year. The 058 is the day of the year. And the 13:13 is the time. Your bottle was earlier in the day.

6ML is the bottling line. Ardbeg use to have several bottling lines, but they are now down to only one the 6ML bottling line - which is the Caledonian line for Ardbeg and Glenmorangie.

I have been looking forward to tasting this batch. Thanks for the review!

9 years ago 0