Ardbeg 20 Years Old 2000 Cask #2 (Oldies & Goldies / Hotel Béro)

A Belgian market exclusive bottled for Oldies & Goldies and Geert Béro of Hotel Béro in Ostend, a hotel and whisky bar whose owner has a long standing relationship with Ardbeg for private cask bottlings. Cask #2 sits near the very start of the distillery's curated Single Cask sequential programme, the same low numbered series that produced cask #10 (released globally the same year) and cask #86 (the Fortnum & Mason 300th anniversary in 2007).

Filled on 10 January 2000 into first fill American oak bourbon barrel, the same fill day as cask #10, and matured on Islay for twenty years before bottling on 27 March 2020 at 48.2% ABV. Non chill filtered with no added colour, 221 bottles drawn at natural strength. The 2000 vintage marks Ardbeg's full transition into stable modern Glenmorangie owned production.

First fill bourbon delivers heavy lactone loading across twenty years: cis and trans beta methyl gamma octalactone build coconut and oiled wood, while lignin vanillin and syringaldehyde layer sweet baking spice. Modern Ardbeg's 50 to 55 ppm phenol spec carries through as guaiacol, syringol and 4 methylguaiacol smoke. The Ardbeg purifier signature, redirecting heavy congeners through a worm above the spirit still, leaves a clean ester pool that reads as pineapple, lemon and tropical fruit across the integrated phenolic core, the distillery's fingerprint at the modern peat specification.