Ardbeg Fermutation

I don't like Ardbeg - there, I said it. It's not because I'm generally averse to a peated malt, but because most Ardbegs feel interchangeable to me: 90 % of the experience is always the same kind of loud and garish and coarse that may be fun for a sip or two, but quickly becomes annoying, and at that point, I simply do not care anymore about the remaining 10 % that differentiate Ardbeg's bottlings into this or that direction.

With this 2021 Committee Release, things are a little bit different. The Fermutation is not your typical Ardbeg; maybe you wouldn't even recognize it in a blind tasting. This is probably due to two things: First of all, and in contrast to almost the entire core range and even most of the Committee Releases, this Ardbeg actually has a decent age statement of 13 years (I'm neither counting the Wee Beastie, because 5 is NAS to me, nor the Traigh Bhan, because it is just too pricey to be considered core range), and abra-friggin'-cadabra, the always-the-same boring edginess has been toned down towards a significantly more refined experience, in terms of both the character of the spirit and the character of the peat. This stuff goes down much more pleasantly, and I hazard the guess that very few die-hard Ardbegians would keep complaining for long if the core range had higher age statements, but to each their own.

The second and even more impactful characteristic that sets off the Fermutation against its distillery mates is - hence the name - the insanely long fermentation time of a whopping 21 days. For comparison, the wort for Ardbeg's core range bottlings is fermented for only around 70 hours, and even fermentation extremists such as Glenallachie or Glen Scotia barely scrape the 150-hour mark.

So what kind of malt did this unusual production process yield? Well... have you ever left slightly damp lettuce in a bowl for too long, so that some bits of it have turned brown and slimy, maybe even so much so that, coming into the kitchen, you first assumed you left the biowaste trash can open by accident? While this does sound fairly disgusting, I have to admit that the malt really is far from it. You could, in more neutral terms, describe the taste as a funkiness somewhere in between earthy, herbal and yeasty notes.

To be sure, the Fermutation is not tasty in a conventional way that makes you smack your lips, but it's just so unique and fascinating and will at the very least deepen your understanding of whisky. I for one cannot help but like it for its weirdness.