The following originally appeared on Whiskyhost on March 30, 2010:

I've finally taken receipt of my Ardbeg Rollercoaster.  Purchased online from the distillery the day it was released, my little beauty has taken its sweet time getting to my house in the Inland Northwest.  Let's hope the wait has been worth it...

Ardbeg Rollercoaster is a cask strength Committee bottling of casks from the last ten years (combination of both sherry and bourbon).  It has been released to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the Ardbeg Committee (which is estimated to have 50000 members).  The oldest cask in the bottling dates from 1997 while the youngest dates from 2006.  That's a lot of young whisky bottled at a deliciously high ABV...  I'm ready for my first ride on the Rollercoaster:

Ardbeg Rollercoaster, NAS, 57.3% ABV

C: Gold

N: Pungent (green olives, brine, cheese & onion crisps, peat reek, boat tar and a suggestion of spent matches) but also sweet (white chocolate, golden raisins, browned butter) and peppery (freshly ground white pepper and pink peppercorns)

P: Very oily and certainly not shy - whoa!  Sooty, chipotle peppers, lots of dark chocolate (high cocoa content), those monkey nuts that I love so much!

F: Long, sweet pipe tobacco, monkey nut shells, red wine gums in the very back

Overall: Absolutely delicious.  This fits my flavor profile to a tee: young, unabashed, pungent and smoky.  I'll have to go back through my notes but this might just be my favorite whisky of 2010!  And while I appreciate there's a lot of hype surrounding all things Ardbeg I'm confident this bottling would do just as well in a blind tasting as it would in a named one.

The chaps at the Edinburgh Whisky Blog tasted Rollercoaster back in February.

So did Serge.

Ruben tasted it in early March.