Ardbeg Galileo

49% ABV, ~£150-£200 for 70cl

Score: 79/100

What they say:

Distilled in 1999 and matured for 12 years, some of the spirit was wholly matured in ex-marsala wine casks, the remainder in Bourbon casks.

What I say:

Galileo was launched to celebrate Ardbeg’s collaboration with Texas-based company NanoRacks as part of a project to study the extraction of terpenes (a group of organic compounds resulting from the degradation of Oak norisoprenoids which contribute to either fruity-violet or tobacco like aromas in the final whisky) from wood by a 50/50 water/ethanol mixture in microgravity. See experiment details on NanoRacks website here.

Sadly, no space whisky was used in the production of Galileo. At 2 years long and using only 6ml of 50% ABV to dip each of their wood MixStix into I suspect no space whisky was actually made at all in this process, but why let the truth get in the way of a good story..? So here’s what we thought of 100% distilled by Martians in Space:1999 and matured on Jupiter super-space whisky Ardbeg Galileo, sadly sampled on Earth and not it’s intended export market near Alpha Centauri.

Colour:

Full gold

Nose:

Malty, Elastoplast sticking plasters, briny seaweed, vanilla, coconut, sweet freshly grated nutmeg, iron filings

Taste:

Almost fruity spice, cinnamon, pepper, peaty malt, chewy and complex, oily and mouth filling, hot and spicy chipotle, acidic, medicinal, fusty oak wood, germolene and vanilla custard

Finish:

Long, malty, spice and peat

Would I buy it:

Sadly I don’t have enough Space moola (or Quasi Universal Intergalactic Denomination QUID’s) to buy a bottle of this stuff, though I did get to sample it from a bottle clearly intended for some giant intergalactic species. I actually found this rather young and feisty and a little too acidic for my liking, so glad I kept my Quatloos in the bank after all.