No, no and no! This is a privately maintained site by a whisky enthusiast.

The Ardbeg Project is the creation of a comprehensive list for all Single Malt Whisky ever produced from the Ardbeg Distillery. The primary objective would entail creating a system to catalog all Standard Expressions, Vintages, Single Casks, Committee, Feis Ile, Special, Limited, "One-off" or "Serendipitous" Releases ever originally bottled (OB) by Ardbeg.

The purpose of this site is to provide a common place to share all of this information.

I got hooked on Ardbeg, in late 2005, after receiving a bottle from my boss. Prior to this first sample of Ardbeg TEN, my whisky experience was limited to various blends on ice, usually sucked down at bars or small parties.

Here is a link to the picture credits.

The copyright of these pictures and images stays with the respective owners.

• Thomas Krüger's Whisky Auction pictures © copyright by WhiskyAuction.Com 2010
• The pictures and logos from Ardbeg © copyright by Ardbeg Distillery 2010
• The Whisky Exchange pictures © copyright by The Whisky Exchange 2010
• La Maison du Whisky pictures © copyright by La Maison du Whisky 2010
• Whisky-Online.com pictures © copyright by Whisky-Online.com 2010
• Whiskyraritäten pictures © copyright by Whiskyraritäten/Lothar Langer 2010
• Abbey Whisky pictures © copyright by Abbey Whisky 2010
• Whisky Paradise pictures © copyright by Whisky Paradise 2010
• Royal Mile Whiskies pictures © copyright by Royal Mile Whiskies 2010

Far from it! I hope to have a fairly complete list of all Distillery or Original Bottles (OB) released after Glenmorangie purchased Ardbeg in 1997. However, the list of pre-1997 OB's will be another story.

At some point, I'll start adding pages for Independent Bottles (IB) and Mystery Malts (MM) as well as any Private Party (PP) bottles that are shared with this site. This will be a major undertaking so I will not attempt this until the OB's are finished.

A bottle code is a 12 digit code printed on the bottle to identify the Year, Month, Day and Time the bottle was filled at the Distillery.

More info on bottle codes can be found here.

Bottle codes matter for a few reasons.

• If you're interested in batch variation, you can compare bottles with different dates to see how they differ. Look here and here for a recounting of batch variation. Tim (Dr. Entropy) from www.smwhisky.com is a seasoned "bottle code" veteran, and probably knew bottle codes before my Ardbeg experience was but a glimmer in the Scotch Gods eyes.
• If you like collecting, but you can't afford all the single casks, specializing in different years of one expression can be fun.
• Helps in the War on Whisky Fakers by knowing all the details of the bottle. Codes, and label varieties, don't lie!
• Find that special bottle, which just happens to have been bottled on your Birthday or Anniversary. I found my birthday bottle already!
• Look for the elusive "Canadian Uigeadail" bottle that won Jim Murray's WOTY for 2009. Or at least be lucky enough to get one from Switzerland, Finland or Australia from the same batch.

On the other hand, bottle codes may mean nothing to you, and you just want to drink some Ardbeg. Nothing wrong with that either!

This is a word I came up with to describe myself, but I've met a few others that are every bit of an Ardnut, in their own way.

• I'm an Ardnut because I want to compile all of this information and share it. Oh, and it's my favorite malt too!
• Other Ardnut's visit the Ardbeg Distillery every year, and have created great sites to share their devotion.
• Yet others collect (and drink) many of the expressions I'll never be able to try, due to rarity or price.
• Basically, an Ardnut is anyone who is crazy over Ardbeg.

Absolutely not! This information will help everyone that wants to know not only more about the bottles previously produced, but also the currently available Ardbeg Range.

The only price value I may ever list on this site is what the bottles originally sold for in retail. There are retail shops and auction sites that can give you an idea of the value, and always remember, the value of a bottle is what you are willing to pay.

That would be me. I go by "lohssanami" on whisky forums, and I'm just a techie nerd in the Silicon Valley.

As you can tell by my site, I'm not a web developer. I just decided to learn some html since I didn't want to pay someone an exorbitant amount of money to design a site. Especially a site where I have no written outline for its design.

I call this first version 1.0 as this is my first attempt at web design. My focus was just getting some content and pictures onto the site, but as soon as I'm finished with v1.0, I'll start planning on a more advanced website that will be called v2.0.

It's probably something I did wrong. Let me know if something has gone awry!

I've tested this site with IE7, Firefox 3.0.10, Google Chrome 1.0.154.59, Opera 9.64, and Safari 3.2.2 without any problems. I installed the DOM feature in Sea Monkey, and after several restarts, it seems to have fixed the menu craziness!

I know, on "The Bottles" main page, I wanted all the thumbs to have the same background, but that became difficult when all the pictures I had for some of the bottles were on a white background! I'm just learning how to use photoshop too so I'll fix any pictures that look bad as soon as I get around to them.

For now, you can use the contact page or you can message "lohssanami" on these forums:

• Spirit of Islay Forum
• Whisky Magazine Forum
• WhiskyWhiskyWhisky Forum
• Straight Bourbon Forum

You can also check out "The Ardbeg Project" on Facebook and message me there as well.

I always say the internet is like TV or radio, if you don't like it, change the channel.

Oh, and no, I have nothing better to do!