NATO Chief's Single-Cask Ardbeg Sells Out in Days

by Noah Joseph (RSS feed)
Jul 13th 2010 at 4:02PM

Ten years ago, during his tenure as Secretary-General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Lord George Robertson visited the Ardbeg distillery. Not such a remote trip for the world leader, as Islay – the Scottish island where Ardbeg is made – is also his home, carrying as he does the honorific of Baron of Port Ellen (the island's largest town). But it was a big deal for the distillers at Ardbeg, who laid down a cask in his name.

That cask has now been bottled as a special edition, bearing the same age as the standard non-chill-filtered Ardbeg, but each bottle specially labeled and hand-signed by Robertson himself. All 202 bottles of it, each of which sold within days of its release for a handsome £220.00 apiece, with a portion of the proceeds going to the Erskine foundation to support military veterans with medical care.

Tags: ardbeg, erskine, lord robertson, port ellen, robertson, scotch, scotch whisky, single cask, single malt, whisky