Ardbeg 25 Years Old joins permanent range

Ardbeg 25 Years Old has become the oldest expression to join the Islay distillery’s permanent range.

It is released worldwide this week, available from Clos19.com and various specialist whisky retailers at an rrp of £710.

Creator Dr Bill Lumsden said: “After a quarter of a century in the cask, you’d be forgiven for imagining that Ardbeg 25 Years Old would have lost some of the hallmark Ardbeg smoky punch. I can assure you it hasn’t.

“And yet there’s also a remarkable complexity and elegance to this whisky that I find utterly captivating. It’s unmistakably Ardbeg, but unlike any Ardbeg you’ve tasted before.”

It was distilled during the 1990s, when Ardbeg was only producing a trickle of new make spirit every year.

Lumsden and his team decided that this rare whisky was so exquisite that it should be bottled and released as a permanent expression, albeit in limited quantities.

Ardbeg 25 Years Old is presented in a unique gun metal bottle encased in a metal cage.