Ardbeg House Opens for Whisky Destination Travel in Islay, Scotland

On the Scottish Isle of Islay, where there’s smoke, there’s likely a glass of Ardbeg nearby.

“Ardbeg is the smokiest, the most peaty of all the whiskies in the world,” says Casper MacRae, chief executive officer of The Glenmorangie Company , which owns Ardbeg and is part of Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton. “But the flavor is also sweet and very delicious. And that combination of surprisingly delicious as well as incredibly smoky, we call that the ‘peaty paradox.’”

This September, the brand is debuting Ardbeg House, a boutique hotel that invites visitors to visit Ardbeg’s home in Scotland and immerse themselves in the whisky’s “peaty-paradox” world. In Gaelic, “Ardbeg” translates to “the little headland.” “It was always the distillery that was at the end of the road,” MacRae says of Ardbeg’