Ardbeg 31 Years Old 1975 Cask #4717 (Feis Ile 2006)

Released only at the Ardbeg distillery during the Feis Ile festival on Islay in 2006, with 165 bottles drawn from fino sherry cask #4717. Feis Ile is the annual whisky and music festival held across the Islay distilleries during the last week of May, with each distillery contributing exclusive bottlings available only on its open day and only on site. Distillery exclusives at this level of age and rarity rarely surface on the secondary market.

Fino is the lightest, palest and driest of the sherry styles, aged under flor yeast in Jerez and giving casks a different chemical loading than oloroso or pedro ximenez. The 1975 spirit was filled into a single fino butt and matured on Islay for thirty one years through both mothball periods, bottled at natural strength 46.3% ABV with no chill filtration and no added colour.

Fino casks contribute a distinctive saline and almond character through remnant flor metabolites and lower residual sugar than darker sherry styles. Combined with thirty one years of maturation the cask delivers oxidative almond skin and salted nutty notes (acetaldehyde derived) layered onto 1975 peat phenols that have shifted from kilning sharpness toward tarred rope, leather and integrated ash. The Ardbeg purifier signature persists through long ageing as a citrus and orchard fruit register beneath the smoke, a marker of the distillery's distinctive ester profile from this era.