Ardbeg Heavy Vapours

After reviewing my previous reviews, I’ve hit the Perpetuum, Kelpie, Grooves, and the Drum CR so far. These have ranged from solid phenomenal, the Committee Release Drum being my most recent and favorite of the line. Lately, it seems like Ardbeg has gotten wacky with the experimentation here—or at least the packaging. The packaging on this one strikes me as intriguing, and while the story on the box is incredibly corny c the concept is also interesting. Let’s see if the 2023 release stacks up to my previous favorites. Nose: Heavy grapefruit and lemon. White pepper and orange rind. Vanilla custard. Sea salt and seaweed. Iodine and bandaid. Brine. Agave/mezcal. Heavy cinnamon spice. Sugar cookie and heavy butterscotch. Palate: Mint chocolate. More of the grapefruit and lemon. Black bean, red pepper chili. Sun-dried tomato. A combination of campfire and barrel smoke, along with iodine and bandaid. Peat, brine, sea salt, and seaweed. Tennis ball. Agave/mezcal. Ballpark soft pretzel. Cinnamon, white and black pepper, and heavy oak. More of the heavy butterscotch. Finish: Vanilla custard. Agave/mezcal. Grapefruit and lemon. Caramel and milk chocolate. Almond and sugar cookie. Butterscotch and toffee. Orange citrus. Black bean, red pepper chili. Cinnamon, white pepper, and oak. Moderate-long finish. This is a winner for me. I really enjoyed this, as I have practically every Ardbeg before it. I would put this toward the lower end of Committee Release reviews, but that isn’t much of an insult considering the reviews many of those received. It’s a fairly standard Ardbeg profile. It almost feels like the Uigeadail is more of a “limited release” style bottle, while this feels like standard issue stuff. No issue with it staying the way it is by the way. This has the hallmark Ardbeg profile, and definitely punches as hard with the spice, peat, smoke, brine, and citrus notes as any before it. Not as much nuance here. This feels like an experiment that is really more for the distilling staff over at Ardbeg—they get to enjoy the technical elements of undertaking a project like this—more than it is for the consumer. To me, this is just another example of Ardbeg’s ability excellence. At $140, 4.25 is fair. We didn’t break any new ground here but this is a damn fine sipper.

Ardbeg Heavy Vapours has no age statement, is bottled at 46% ABV, and sells for around $130. This is the worst bottle that I have opened in 2023. I have started buying a few bottles as financial investments, and with no intention of opening them. The Ardbeg Day special releases are part of my “portfolio” now. I was inspired to crack open this Ardbeg Day special release by the only YouTube whisky reviewer who I still watch on a regular basis, Eat Smoke Drink, because he absolutely and hilariously goes into a rage about how atrocious this whisky is. Ardbeg Heavy Vapours is so monumentally bad, and such a malicious rip-off for the consumer that it belongs in a museum, perhaps next to the modern Macallan 18 Double Oak. This is Ardbeg Wee Beastie that they fucked up by forgetting a purifier on the still, and instead of throwing out the ruined product, they decided to come up with a marketing gimmick for this garbage and sell it for more than twice of the price of Wee Beastie. This whisky does have some average density vapors on the nose, and smells decent, but completely falls apart on the palate and finish. This is young, young whisky that tastes like smoky vodka. There’s unflattering notes of plastic, unripe banana, and potatoes. Thankfully, there is no finish with this whisky. Ardbeg is a distillery that has recently started to evolve into a long-lasting Ponzi scheme, and, fortunately, there are still plenty of new clueless “Ardbegians” to inflate the prices of discontinued bottles, so buying bottles of Ardbeg will probably still make financial sense for many years to come, if you are not planning to drink what’s inside. And, if you have the disposable income, you can still open a bottle for shits and giggles here and there, when the mood hits. I must give Ardbeg credit because Heavy Vapours is, in its own special way, awe-inspiring. They have stopped making whisky and they are just bottling their own piss. And I must yield a bemused stunned smile as I drink $130-a-bottle piss.

I got my hands again on Ardbeg's "Heavy Vapours", but this time, is the normal "standard" edition. As you might know, Heavy Vapours was one of 2023 Ardbeg's Committee releases. They actually made two, a higher abv one (which did not impressed me much) and this 46%abv one. On the nose, swampy water, smoke. It actually smells incredible. A fresh can of tennis balls. Bloody medicinal cottons, synthetic grass. Chocolate and sugary water. On the palate, it started sweet. Sugar, grassy, herbal. Spicy raw; meat. Actually very sugary. Aftertaste is Smoky, sugary and grassy. Not too complex. Overall, this is a very good whisky. Is it better than the standard Uigeadail or Corryvrekan? No it is not. Is it better than the Cask Strength Heavy Vapours? It just might be. Enjoyable peaty dram, my score for this one is 90 over 100.

Heavy peat aroma, but smells kind of like a Laphroaig wet peat than the usual Ardbeg smell. More fresh floral rather than dried. Rich flavor, almost entirely smoke, with a tingling spice. It's that same green peat flavor on the tongue , but not as much as on the nose. Love the flavor, but it's a little one note, lacking depth.

Nose is bad. Oily. Maybe mildew. Palate and finish get better. Some peat but not the normal Ardbeg profile. Some lemon sweetness on the finish. Not bad, but a bit disappointing.

Drop of water and this is an easy smoth drink, to easy. Soft finish.