Port Ellen 13 yo 1983/1996 (43%, Instituto Ecologico Italiano)
Colour: white wine. Nose: pure seawater and sheep wool with these wee grubby undertones that are very typical PE. Fisherman’s rubber wellies, tarred rope, smoked sea salt and bitumen. Gets increasingly petrolic and gently ashy as well. Mouth: just perfect at 43%! Very pure and briny peat smoke, ashiness, tarred rope again, more rather punchy and fat coastal qualities, grapefruit rind, almond oil, camphor and pickling brine. Superb peaty and briny combination developing. Finish: long, tarry, full of smoked olive oils, tinned sardines, lemon juice and capers. Comments: just perfect young Port Ellen. 
SGP: 466 - 91 points

Port Ellen 1971/1989 (40%, Jas Gordon & Co. Auxil Import France)
Colour: gold. Nose: stunning old school Islay peat that manages to be both somehow drying and coastal but also sweetish and incorporating feelings of smoked honey, dried exotic fruits and natural tar liqueurs. Simple in some ways, but utterly beautiful. I find it a little reminiscent of some 1960s Caol Ila. Mouth: feels little tired at first, but these deeper, bass-like notes of dry, earth peat smoke, coal embers and medical tinctures such as iodine are there and begin to grow in presence with a little time. Lovely drying, peppery and tarry quality. As ever, this is just made a bit problematic by G&M’s bottling practice of chill filtration + 40% + caramel (probably). Gets surprisingly salty and earthy with time, showing some wonderful notes of dried seaweed and tar. Finish: surprisingly long given that initial softness of arrival in the mouth. Glowing peat embers, tar, iodine and this rather sooty / camphor note in the aftertaste. Comments: a wobble on the initial palate, but I think it recovers very finely. Port Ellen had some real glory years in the those first five years of production post-reconstruction. The nose alone is 94-point material but taken altogether I think we’ll go with… 
SGP: 566 - 91 points. 

Port Ellen 1978/1992 (43%, Dun Eideann, Auxil Import France, casks #70-77, 3,500 bottles)
An old sub-series of Signatory’s, one which sheltered many incredible bottlings during its lifetime. Colour: white wine. Nose: very different, and at first feels much lighter on the peat smoke, much more dominated by lemon rinds, seawater, wet beach pebbles and delicate medicinal notes of bandages and mercurochrome. Perhaps also a few notes of capers and green peppercorns in brine. A beautiful, lighter take on Port Ellen that still manages to retain some of these more typical ‘dirty’ aspects. Mouth: terrific arrival! Sooty, drying and peppery peat smoke, balanced by seawater, more lemon zest and notes of coal smoke and oysters. Fresh, but firmly on the lighter side of this distillery. Lovely gentle saltiness that works well with these citrus vibes and lighter peat smoke notes. Finish: good length, on a rather crystalline, brittle peat smoke, anchovy paste, pepper and tar. There’s also a fun farmy note that appears in the aftertaste. Comments: the late 70s were slightly less ‘immediate’ vintages at Port Ellen I would say, but this one has a freshness and a clarity of distillate character that is just sublime, even at this humble 43%. 
SGP: 455 - 92 points. 

Port Ellen 21 yo 1979/2001 (50%, Douglas Laing ‘Old Malt Cask’, 636 bottles)
Colour: straw. Nose: cleaner than the 80s vintages of PE I would say, much more on crystalline peat and shoreline ‘stuff’. Lots of crushed seashells, seawater, beach pebbles and also bandages and gauze. Some mineral salts and hints of dried seaweed too. With water: very nicely on crab sticks, seashells, mussels in broth, sandalwood and coastal herbs. Mouth: excellent and emphatic Port Ellen oiliness with soft embrocations, white pepper and wee traces of camphor and hessian. A little tar too. With water: pure, coastal, salty and pin sharp with lemon juice, peat ashes and coal smoke. Finish: good length, rather briny, ashy, smoky and on lanolin and kelp. Comments: not a stellar Port Ellen, but rather a bright, clean, slightly lighter and very good one. 
SGP: 456 - 89 points.

Port Ellen 27 yo 1978/2006 (54.8%, Douglas Laing, Platinum Selection, Old & Rare, sherry, 396 bottles) 
Colour: pale amber. Nose: stupendous tarriness, mixed with salted liquorice, varnish, cheng pi, dried kelp and umami seasonings such as Maggi. Superb earthiness and dryness with wee cured meats and some preserved dark fruits. Plum sauce, beef stock and salted almonds. Brilliant and tense fusion of peat and sherry. With water: some very old balsamic, pork scratchings, iodine and natural tar. Mouth: brilliant, powerful arrival that also carries clear complexity with it. Many salty, gamey and umami notes, with lovely drying peat smoke too, but never dominating these wonderful, soft and plummy dark fruit notes that are clearly present too. With water: pristinely salty and earthy and wonderfully drying. Remains superbly tense, powerful and rigorously on smoked meats, sea salt, tar and soy sauce. Also herbal bitters and artichoke liqueur. Finish: very long, packing more of the same relentless salinity, earthy dryness, peppery and gamey meat notes and more bitter herbal qualities. Comments: outstanding sherried Port Ellen. Seems like Douglas Laing had many great sherry cask PEs. A profile that’s extremely hard to encounter in whiskies today. 
SGP: 567 - 93 points. 

Port Ellen 10 yo 1981/1992 (64%, Cadenhead ‘Authentic Collection’ 150th Anniversary, for Preiss Import, California)
Colour: pale white wine. Nose: more closed and compact, which is to be expected, these super high strength versions are rarely as expressive the older ones. This one displays a rather austere salinity, with hints of ink, wool, lemon juice and concrete. Water is required… With water: getting a bit weird now, on inks, graphite, plastic, burning newspaper and a slightly farmy touch. Mouth: very tough! Some sense of peaty purity as hoped for, but also a rather brutal austerity that again brings to mind concrete, chalk, clay and beach pebbles. Also a little plasticine and vinyl. With water: carbolic acid, lemonade, chalk, paraffin, ointments, tar - extreme in the extreme! Finish: long, hyper-drying, ashy, aggressively salty and again this feeling of brutalist austerity. Comments: not too sure about this one. It’s a little all over the shop, within this very narrow and tough profile. If that makes any sense. 
SGP: 268 - 84 points.

Port Ellen 12 yo 1983/1995 (57.1%, Cadenhead ‘Authentic Collection’)
Colour: white wine. Nose: back to the much more familiar and comforting purity that these production years display when at their best. Stunning freshness at first, full of citrus fruits, coastal air, beach sand, pebbles, coastal flowers and mineral salts. The peat is more elegant and intricate too, a slightly more aromatic and brittle style of peat smoke that I’m used to in young, early 80s Port Ellen. With time it’s getting a bit saltier and little more petrolic and precise. With water: is it possible to have such a thing as ‘complex saltiness’? Really, saline and citric, but full of tiny mineral notes, medical tinctures, cooking oils, samphire, gentian, clay. A rather hypnotic aromatic profile that keeps on developing… Mouth: gloriously pure, oily, peaty and coastal. Retaining this impression of power and freshness from the nose, adding in a few drops of lemon liqueur, eucalyptus oil and black olive tapenade. Also preserved lemons. I almost don’t want to add water, it’s just perfect. But we must do our duty for Whiskyfun! With water: holy moly! Opens up in stunning fashion! Getting broader, fatter in texture, full of smoked olive oil, ointments, medicinal herbs, seawater, grapefruit and lemon again, citrus liqueurs, paraffin and TCP. Finish: very, very long. Tar, peat soot, dried anchovies, capers and more preserved lemons clinging to your teeth for dear life! Comments: A whisky that starts out brilliant, then seems to just improve leaps and bounds with each step. Amazing development and continually captivating. 
SGP: 566 - 93 points. 

Port Ellen 15 yo 1981/1996 (62.6%, The Whisky Connoisseur, Cask Master Selection No.3, cask #1391)
Colour: pale straw. Nose: Pure tar, pickling brine, dirty martini, beach bonfire, gherkins, capers, anchovy paste and green olives. Also an almost solvent-tinged peat profile which is just great. With water: wonderfully deep and fat, full of hessian and camphor impressions, smoked olive oil, grapefruit peel and cough medicine. Mouth: superb arrival, with amazing fatness of texture, which carries the alcohol very effortlessly. Many more tarry, camphor and thick peaty impressions. Aniseed, salted liquorice, soy sauce and pure seawater with lemon juice. With water: even more precise, hones in on this very fresh, mineral and coastal profile, riddled with thick peat smoke, tar, medicinal embrocations and seawater. Finish: very long, once again! Brilliantly peaty, pure, oily, tarry, medicinal and yet still with some lively citrus notes in the mix. Comments: brilliant young(ish) Port Ellen. It manages to juggled fatness and tension in an amazing and compelling way. Young Islay whiskies today tend to lack this depth and fatness I find. 
SGP: 567 - 92 points. 

Port Ellen 18 yo 1980/1998 (62.2%, Cadenhead ‘Authentic Collection’, 312 bottles)
Colour: white wine. Nose: magnificent! A similar profile but on the cusp of greater age and maturity, and with that comes greater complexity in this case. Beautiful notes of fresh citrus fruits with the expected, and really emphatic, notes of seawater, tar, petrol, iodine and wet kelp. Boiler smoke, aniseed distillate, fennel and chilli sausage, waxed canvas and tarred rope. Totally brilliant! With water: a pure coastal profile now, with waxed lemons, fresh oysters, dried herbs, delicate briny qualities. Wonderful development and complexity. Mouth: again, this sense of purity married with fatness. Pure, vivid and sharp peaty flavours, with coastal and mineral purity, but also an oiliness and thickness of texture in the mouth which is fantastic. Again lemons, limes and grapefruit with even one or two tropical glimmers as well. With water: back to more tarry and peaty power and precision. Still this sense of fatness with more petrol, impressions of smoked olive oil, camphor, iodine and oily sheep wool. Finish: very long! Really dense peat smoke coating the palate. Also lemon and herbal notes, verbena, menthol touches and gentian. Comments: I don’t know 1980 Port Ellens too well, but this one is sensational. What I increasingly realise about these teenage Port Ellens is the combination of purity of flavour and fatness of texture is what really stands them apart. 
SGP: 467 - 93 points. 

Ardbeg 1974/1992 (43%, Dun Eideann, Auxil Import France, casks #2026-2030, 3,800 bottles)
A good example of the kind of rather simple bottling that was made relatively affordably available by early independents and helped slowly but surely shift popular attention onto single malts. Also, very much an artefact from the ‘age of innocence’ when people thought nothing of putting out a sherry matured 1974 Ardbeg in a side-series like this at 43%. How times have changed… Colour: amber. Nose: even at 43%, this immense power of 70s Ardbeg comes through. A stunning mix of fusel oils, pure tar extracts, hessian and a deep, rather sweetish and highly medicinal-tinged peat smoke. Wonderfully dense and aromatic with iodine, dunnage warehouse and heavy camphor all emerging. This is all without even mentioning the sherry, which is really beautifully integrated to the point that you almost don’t notice it, although it is certainly there adding wonderful salty and earthy notes beneath all that stunning peat smoke. Mouth: huge whisky for 43%! Stunningly dry, earthy and tarry peat, full of textural, slightly grubby smoky qualities, black pepper, iodine drops, old rope and oily hessian cloth impressions. I also find many medicinal roots and herbs such as gentian, wormwood and verbena. Also deeply earthy aged black teas. A deceptively complex and hypnotic whisky, even though the dominant impression is of a highly singular, perfect fusion of sherry and peat into one profile. Finish: stunningly long, pristinely salty, herbal, bitter, drying, earthy and immensely rich with thick peat smoke, black pepper and yet more of these wonderfully tarry rope and camphor notes. Comments: the distance between trying old Ardbegs such as this grows greater each year, yet almost each and every occasion is a sledgehammer reminder of just what an astonishing and endlessly idiosyncratic whisky this distillery created during these years. This humble little bottling is up there with some of the best. 
SGP: 567 - 93 points. 

Ardbeg 1975/2002 (46.2%, OB for Clan des Grandes Malts, cask #4701, sherry hogshead, 252 bottles)
A very rare official single cask for France! Let’s see how it handles after that brilliant wee 1974. Colour: orangey amber. Nose: amazing how there are such obvious similarities, but this is altogether more about precision and focus, whereas the 1974 was broader and more open in its immediate profile, perhaps due to being a multi-cask vatting and bottled at 43%. This is very narrowly on a stunning mix of iodine and tarry Ardbeg peat smoke. Once again you have the feeling that the sherry cask influence is there, but it’s so deeply entwined and bound up with the distillate that it’s hard to even notice them as separate forces. This one also displays a greater impression of sweetness and concentration, a feeling of herbal cough syrups liqueurs made of gentian and tar. There’s a global touch of fragility to this nose, but it remains hypnotic and undeniably gorgeous. Mouth: a little slow but the progression in the mouth builds and builds to a stunningly thick, peaty crescendo. Syrupy sweet, while also drying herbal and peppery at the same time; one of those whiskies that feels like it should not make sense on paper, the things it is able to achieve simultaneously. Deeply oily, tarry and with an almost fatty, glistening peat presence on the palate. Finish: wonderfully long, stunningly herbal and peaty, perfectly bitter, and showcasing all the expected medicines, tars, wee earthy and meaty notes and this gorgeously tarry aftertaste. Comments: I am going back and forth between these two Ardbegs and they are both subtly different but also so close in their brilliance. I adore the breadth of character in the Dun Eideann, but this one carries and little extra precision and power with it. Both are exceptional reminders of just what a unique and world class spirit 70s Ardbeg was. 
SGP: 577 - 94 points. 

Ardbeg 19 yo 1975/1995 (47.3%, Cadenhead, Authentic Collection)
Colour: pale gold. Nose: under the bonnet of the same distillate without any sherry, or even any obvious wood really. Pure medicinal embrocations with many cough syrups, herbal inclusions, tarred rope, whole warehouses of hessian and things like tiger balm, vapour rubs and Bonjella mouth antiseptic. It also has this superb element of varnish, resinous fir wood and salt cured fish. And all that before we even mention this totally glorious old school Ardbeg peatiness. Mouth: this naturally lower cask strength reveals amazing complexity in this spirit, emphatically tarry and peaty as expected, but also many tiny tertiary flavours. Old pressed flowers, dried out old honey, face cream, olive oil, broiled shellfish, crystallised orange, cocktail bitters, aniseed… the list goes on. It’s just a shame the sample I have is rather tiny because you really feel this is the sort of dram that you could sip and analyse in the small hours. Finish: medium, fatty, tarry, full of drying peppery peat, herbal liqueurs and many subtle medicinal embrocations. Comments: the softer side 1970s Ardbeg, but a bit of a revelation in terms of all that complexity on display. An irrepressible and brilliant distillate. 
SGP: 466 - 92 points. 

Ardbeg 20 yo 1975/1995 (51.8%, Cadenhead, Authentic Collection)
Colour: pale gold. Nose: amazing similarity, and yet, clear difference. The peat is almost gelatinous and dominating here. Coal tar soap, animal fats, hessian, TCP, iodine drops, pure camphor, tarred rope and richly smoked olive oil. There’s also lemon oil, white mushroom and even wee tropical touches beginning to emerge, which we don’t often find in Ardbeg. With water: a tiny bit of Port Ellen cosplay going on with some slightly ‘dirty’ notes of creel nets and boiler smoke. But otherwise, it’s tarry rope and dry, peppery peat galore! Mouth: surprisingly, it’s the salinity which takes immediate centre stage. Stunningly precise, coastal, salty and full of shellfish broth, Maggi, soy sauce, horseradish and salt-baked cod. Then the peat and medicinal components really begin to emerge in force, also more lemon oil, more tiny wee exotic fruits and things like crystallised honey and classical waxes. With water: magnificent, all of the above but only more so. Stunning and quite breath-taking. Finish: another one that’s extremely long, really getting in the quantum realm of tar, peat, medicine, herbs and shoreline ‘vibes’. Comments: you tend to run out of descriptors and superlatives a bit when tasting 1970s Ardbeg of this calibre. 1970s Ardbeg: 1 English language: Nil. 
SGP: 577 - 94 points.  

Ardbeg 27 yo 1972/2000 (50%, Douglas Laing 'Old Malt Cask’, 238 bottles)
Colour: gold. Nose: older and more concentrated. These 1972s tend to involve something of the softer and more enigmatic characteristics of 60s Ardbeg in my view (alas, no known examples of Ardbeg from 1970 or 1971 were ever bottled, to my knowledge). So, we have a totally stunning fusion of thick, rich peat smoke, crystallised honey that verges on aged mead, pure tar extracts, very old herbal liqueurs and many layers of camphor, antiseptic, aniseed, iodine and the brilliant medley of mentholated notes and dried herbs. With water: camphor and herbal medicines and liqueurs galore. Decades old Drambuie diluted with cask strength 1950s Talisker! Mouth: quite simply, the nose in molten, sippable form! Only I’d add there’s a sublime umami and salty savoury streak that runs through everything. The peat is drier and even more powerful. There’s a whole slurry of bandages, antiseptic, TCP, cough syrups and ointments. Then that formidable, relentless tarriness that just keeps on asserting itself over and over at each stage. With water: it brings back these honeyed tones and ideas of mead, liqueurs, old Chartreuse, copper coins, Bakelite, clay, camphor, fennel seed and turmeric. Finish: deep, extremely long and profoundly rich, thick and peaty. Comments: If you put STR staves under my fingernails, I might just admit that 1972 is my favourite Ardbeg vintage. The research continues though… 
SGP: 467 - 94 points.