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Ardbeg 1973-2003 - 30 Year Old - Douglas Laing - Old & Rare Platinum Selection - Single Cask
Ardbeg 1973 - 2003. 30 Year Old. Bottled by Douglas Laing for their Old & Rare Platinum Selection. Single Cask. One of 197 bottles. 700ml. 48.9%.
One of ten fabulous casks of Ardbeg 1973 bottled by Douglas Laing between 2000 and 2009, this particular version appeared in 2003 at 30 years old and was one of the best of the bunch. Bottled without colouring or chill filtration, this 1973 Ardbeg single cask yielded 197 bottles at its natural cask strength of 48.9% and is a fantastic combo of age-mellowed but still powerful dry ashy phenols and wet burnt peat, with generous balancing citrus and spices on a chewy, richly-textured palate.
Founded in 1815, Ardbeg is one of Islay’s iconic distilleries. Ardbeg was purchased by Diageo forerunners DCL and Hiram Walker in 1973, with Walker taking full control in 1977, the year the distillery’s maltings were closed. Ardbeg was mothballed for most of the 1980s; production began again in 1989 under new owners Allied Lyons, but only for two months a year until 1996 when the distillery closed again. In 1997 the dilapidated Ardbeg distillery was bought by Glenmorangie plc (now part of LVMH) and its fortunes turned. Ardbeg was restored and relaunched, kickstarting the craze for heavily peated single malt whisky.
Ardbeg was seldom commercially available before the Allied/DCL takeover - the old white label official bottlings are now very rare. Allied bottled a handful of black label Ardbegs in the 1990s including the popular Ardbeg 30-year-old. The breakthrough bottlings were the Ardbeg 17-year-old and Ardbeg 1974 Provenance released by Glenmorangie in 1997 - these were soon followed by numerous magnificent single casks from 1970s vintages that cemented Ardbeg’s reputation. Independent Ardbeg is uncommon nowadays.
Founded in the late 1940s by Fred Douglas Laing Sr, the Douglas Laing company spent decades as whisky blenders and exporters before Fred Laing’s sons Stewart and Fred Jr introduced the highly influential Old Malt Cask single malt range in 1998. The McGibbon’s Provenance and Old & Rare Platinum series followed soon afterwards, establishing Douglas Laing as one of Scotland’s finest independent bottlers.
In 2013 Stewart Laing left the business, taking Old Malt Cask and Old & Rare to his new company Hunter Laing, while Fred Laing Jr was joined by his daughter Cara and her husband Chris Leggatt from Morrison Bowmore, who left the business in 2023. The Old Particular and Extra Old Particular ranges were introduced to replace Old Malt Cask and Old & Rare, and the company has since moved into distilling with the purchase of Strathearn distillery in 2019 and the construction of Clutha distillery in Glasgow.