Inside Ardbeg House: Islay’s new whisky hotel

To book a room at Ardbeg House, go to www.ardbeg.com.

Eat, sleep and drink Ardbeg.

That’s what new boutique hotel Ardbeg House promises visitors and Illeachs alike. Just a short hop from the Distillery on Islay in the town of Port Ellen, it has 12 bedrooms, plus a restaurant and bar. The latter is stocked with exclusive Ardbeg whisky, notably Ardbeg Homecoming, Ardbeg House Reserve, and Ardbeg Badger Juice. 

Formerly the Islay Hotel, the site’s transformation was led by Russell Sage Studios. You might remember them as folks behind the wild and wonderful refurbishment of Glenmorangie House, in Easter Ross. At Ardbeg House, the brief was this: celebrate the best of Islay.

Ardbeg’s own brand of luxury

How do you do that? Design each suite or bedroom to reflect a different chapter of Islay’s story. The Monster room is inspired by the island’s mythical creatures with a behemoth bed (the biggest on Islay?) and references ranging from a bear supposedly scared off by crashing Ardbeg tins together in Canada to the fabled Islay bog gators. Musical fixtures in the room that honours Fèis Ile include a bedside table made from a drum and a violin refashioned as a light.

Whatever you book, two hidden drams of Ardbeg 10 will be waiting for you, with clues revealing their locations. Nods to Shortie, the beloved Ardbeg canine mascot, are everywhere, as are contributions from various Scottish and Islay artisans. Every room has its own distinct, specially picked fragrance that lingers on your clothes. Even the toilet seats are artwork, each ludicrously compelling you to appreciate and photograph. I have never taken so many pictures of toilet seats in my life. 

Other features throughout Ardbeg House include a copper wall art crafted from a retired Ardbeg still. A custom-designed octopus chandelier. A giant tapestry depicting a contemporary scene on the island. An admiral’s hat adorned with fairy lights. I stayed in The Founder’s Room, which honours key people in Ardbeg’s history. But it’s the shower wall that’s a showstopper, with the marble boasting an effect that, to me, looks like a great polar bear in attack mode. It ends up being a Rorschach test as everyone sees something different. 

Eat, sleep, and drink Ardbeg

Ardbeg House is a thematic smorgasbord of a base from which you can explore. It’s Islay’s own answer to Canterbury’s Tale pilgrimage spot, The Tabard Inn. This is where you begin your adventure, your whisky baptism. Every wild landscape, each cosy shire pub, and all the stark, empty beaches are yours to embrace at your convenience. Come for the wildlife, stay for the wild life.

Importantly, it’s just as open to locals as it is to tourists. At the Islay Bar, the cheapest whisky, Ardbeg Wee Beasite, is £3.50 a dram. There’s a whisky-heavy cocktail menu, helmed on my visit by Mothership and Bramble Bar co-founder Jason Scott, maintaining the kind of level that you would expect to see in New York or London. But you won’t pay more than £12 for a cocktail. Most sit at £9. 

You can find pretty much every Ardbeg release there, too, and drink while local musicians play, and above you, a fishing boat is suspended on the ceiling. At 18:15 (a nod to Ardbeg’s founding year of 1815), all guests are invited to the Islay Bar for a special ritual – whisky hour – to toast the day and taste the Ardbeg Badger Juice. We did the very same, and you can read more about that dram below. Also worth noting that, included in the price of your stay is a distillery tour that the team will take you to and from.

Eat, sleep, and drink Ardbeg continued 

At the themed Signature Restaurant, two can dine on a bespoke, seasonal menu of quality with wine and have change for £100. The quality from the bar is maintained here. There are hand-dived scallops collected by one of the distillery’s stillmen. Inventive dishes infused with Ardbeg. A custom Ardbeg-themed smoker and grill made by distillery technician Daniel Branson. You can even brand a great ‘A’ into the meat. The core range is available as you dine, served from a drinks trolley with an iron motorcycle front attached. 

Most tables are round and encourage groups to share in the Ardbeg of it all. Every Friday, the restaurant’s shared Shortie’s Table offers a chance to join others and swap stories over a set menu with whisky pairings. Some locals I spoke to have dined multiple times, and Ardbeg House has only been open for a matter of weeks.

The idea is to appeal to any visitor, from diehard Ardbeggians to those just discovering smoky malt. If you don’t care about whisky a jot, there’s still plenty to appreciate. There’s no one single moment dedicated to converting people to the smoky side, however. No pitches or set aside pathways. The hope rests more in the knowledge that the Ardbeg, the Islay, the character of it all, will surely rub off on you. 

A long way from the dark days

The hotel is drenched in colour, drama, culture, and fun. Everywhere you look, there’s a new detail to admire. Each room you enter is different upon further inspection. When creating an Islay-based whisky-led hotel, the pitfalls of a drab list of tired clichés would be easy to stumble into. Sage and Co. have strided beyond such nonsense to create a unique and beguiling space. 

It’s a long way from the dark days of the 1980s and 90s, when Ardbeg’s future was as uncertain as the whisky market around it. The Glenmorangie Company took a chance on it in 1997, and since then, Ardbeg has ridden various waves. First, as the niche, cult malt fuelled by the community of the Ardbeg Committee. Then, a core part of the single malt revival. Now it sits as an Islay powerhouse; few distilleries can claim to be its equal. Ardbeg’s appeal is rooted in its paradox. The whisky burns with peat, but has a succulent sweetness too. Among the fire, there’s finesse.

The day we arrive, news breaks that Ardbeg’s very own Bryony McNiven will become the Islay malt whisky’s next distillery manager. McNiven is an Islay native who grew up down the road from the distillery and the daughter of an Ardbeg stillman, Ruaraidh MacIntyre. She’s also a chemistry graduate from Glasgow University, a former Ardbeg brand ambassador in Sweden, and a six-year veteran of Ardbeg’s Whisky Creation Team in Edinburgh alongside director of whisky creation Dr Bill Lumsden and master blender Gillian Macdonald. McNiven is a peathead with unrivalled knowledge of Ardbeg’s production, which she will lead from 1 January 2026. 

Inside Ardbeg House

It’s also not lost on anybody that she is the first woman in the modern age to take command of the stills. Being in Ardbeg House the week she is announced feels fitting. In this strange place that overwhelms the senses, the calming notion of a real and promising future ferments. This is an age where many small islands struggle to maintain their culture amid fragile economies. But locals I spoke to talked of people coming back to the island for the jobs whisky is creating. And they can’t believe there’s a space like Ardbeg House on their doorstep. 

It’s a forward step in the battle for whisky tourism to be recognised as the eventual (inter)national pastime it should be. I will never stop banging that drum. The hotel also opens in an era when whisky’s luxury image is under scrutiny. A spirit once made by and for the working class has become a status symbol for the wealthy, and the industry knows where the money is. Push too far into decadence, though, and whisky risks losing the very foundations that made it matter.

Here, bookings start from £230 per night. Bottles worth thousands are stocked. And it’s a long way from duck cannelloni that many of us were reared upon. In Ardbeg’s hands, however, the refined manages to co-exist with something more irreverent and individual. Something more Islay. Like its whisky, with its smoke and sweetness, this hotel has it all. 

If you can’t make it to Ardbeg House anytime soon, here are some thoughts on the whiskies I tasted this week. Some are exclusive to the hotel, and all are limited to Islay. 

Ardbeg House Reserve

Ardbeg House Reserve is aged in bourbon and oloroso sherry casks; just 800 numbered bottles of this 21-year-old cask-strength whisky exist. The colour is astonishing, almost auburn, and the oloroso impact is as obvious in taste as it is in appearance. This is a really dense dram, one that will appeal to those who love when sherry and smoke tango. 

Ardbeg House Reserve Tasting Notes: 

ABV: 52.9% 

Colour: Mahogany 

Nose: A wave of raisin-studded fruitcake and sticky treacle pulls through, before drifting into woodsmoke, charred ribs, and leather armchairs. With water, citrus oils and wild honey add brightness, while a wisp of burning heather keeps it firmly Islay.

Palate: Thick and oily, coating the palate with a surge of tarry peat and smoked herbs. Underneath, dark sugars, figs in syrup, aniseed chews, and nut brittle weave in sweetness. Hints of graphite, damp earth, and old saddle leather keep things rugged.

Finish: Long, briny, and savoury. Black olives, menthol, and camphor drift into tarry smoke and sea spray.

RRP: £400 

Ardbeg Homecoming  

This permanent, small-batch release is intended as a reward for those who make the pilgrimage to Ardbeg’s island home. Aged in bourbon casks, then in first-fill rum casks, the first batch of this cask-strength release is an absolute beauty. Few rum cask whiskies so truly nail that balance of sticky, tropical rummy goodness while remaining true to its own character, in this case, smoke, sea and sweetness.  

Ardbeg Homecoming Tasting Notes: 

ABV: 47.7% 

Colour: Light gold 

Nose: Smoky fudge and caramelised bananas kick things off, followed by juicy pineapple, crisp apples, and grassy malt. A dash of water reveals pine needles, lime zest, and resinous woodsmoke, with fennel spice emerging on the tail.

Palate: Silky and mouth-coating, with smoky treacle, espresso grounds, and salty driftwood. Then the rum cask influence steps in: banana foam sweets, cocoa, buttery shortbread, and a nip of cinnamon.

Finish: Long and smouldering, with lingering sweet tar, herbal lozenge, menthol, and a final flourish of spiced coffee.

RRP: £120 

Ardbeg Badger Juice  

Available only by the dram in the Islay Bar, this small-batch Ardbeg is the creation of master blender Gillian Macdonald. Just 60 litres are made per batch (once it’s gone, it’s gone, folks), drawn from a secret recipe and housed in a black-and-white cask behind the bar. Although the master blender did tease that the first edition is made up of three parcels of stock, all 2000 vintage whisky, as Ardbeg House is very much seen as a home base for the famous Ardbeg Committee, founded that year.

We don’t know the cask breakdown by percentage, but we can reveal that it’s made up of bourbon casks, barrels that held Hypernova (Ardbeg whisky peated to a massive 170ppm), and moscatel casks. It’s at cask strength, as each release will be, and it’s properly tasty. The casks are integrated well, and there’s plenty of interesting moscatel-led flavours to savour. 

Keep an eye out for green smoke from the chimney. Not because the Pope has turned into the Green Goblin or the Wizard of Oz is home. It means a new batch is here. Oh, and why Badger? Consider what it’s an anagram of… 

Ardbeg Badger Juice Batch 1 Tasting Notes:

Colour: Bright gold 

Nose: Oily and unctuous, with lashings of olive oil, gingerbread, nutmeg, and soot. A splash of water teases out sea spray and briny minerality, rounded by salted caramel fudge.

Palate: Soft yet complex, bursting with lime sherbet, spearmint, and sugar-dusted almonds. Fudge sweetness meets antique leather, with smoke seamlessly bound into creosote, menthol, and tar.

Finish: Lingering and evolving, moving from sweet smoke and herbal lozenges into coastal salinity and warming spice.

RRP: £5 a dram. How reasonable is that?