One of our largest collections is bottles from the Islay distillery of Ardbeg , which is among the most famous distilleries in the world so we thought why not take a closer looking at this exceptional Islay distillery and share it fascinating story.

The name of Ardbeg is the Anglicisation of Scottish Gaelic, An Àird Bheag which translates to mean The Small Promontory. 

Ardbeg distillery is located on North west coast of Islay, Argyll and Bute, among the inner Hebrides isles of Scotland. The distllery was founded in 1798 but did'nt start commercial production until 1815. 

Ardbeg source most of their malted barley from the malting's of Port Ellen and they produce mostly heavily peated whisky.  Along with many distillery's of the time for most of it history they produced blended whisky for consumption, by 1886 they were producing 300,000 gallons per year.  In 1980s production was halted until the late end of decade where limited production resumed and continued to remain at low level of production until the mid 1990's when the owners changed hands and kick started full production at the distillery again in July 1997. 

Ardbeg's distillery is output is impressive considering they only use 2 pot stills in production, the Spirit still holds about 17,000 litres at capacity and the wash still holds roughly 18,000 litres in 2018 it was announced a new house was to be built for stills to increase production to almost double, Ardbeg employs around 60 people at the distillery. 

In 2011, vials of ardbeg were sent to the International Space Station to experiment thier interaction, the vials returned in September 2014 the vials were infused into the Ardbeg Galileo release. In July 2022 the most expensive cask ever sold was a Ardbeg 1975 for £16 million to a private collector beating Macallan's previous record. 

Every year as part of the Feis Ile festival Ardbeg host Ardbeg Day and often release a limited edition bottling in celebration along with the other festival celebrations around the isle, the festival is often the final weekend of May each year. 

We here at whiskys.co.uk  have a wide collection of Ardbeg's in store so if heavily peated master crafted whiskys are your dram of choice than you are spoiled for your next choice. Check out the full collection here: Ardbeg Collection