Inside Ardbeg House, the whimsical Islay hotel from the Scotch distillery

It’s day zero at Ardbeg House in Port Ellen, the picturesque coastal town on the Hebridean island of Islay off the west coast of Scotland. Designer Russell Sage is waxing lyrical about local legends in the private dining room under a vast ceiling-mounted, hand-carved wooden octopus. The mood is surreal, bordering bonkers.

With its ten distilleries, Islay is a point of pilgrimage for whisky lovers the world over, and Ardbeg House is a bold new venture by The Glenmorangie Company, part of Moët Hennessy – the wine and spirits division of LVMH. The boldness comes from how Ardbeg and Sage have gone about bringing the hotel to life, which is remarkable – in imagination, execution and experience. Experience is the operative word here. ‘From the moment people step inside the door, I want them to have a smile on their face,’ Sage says gleefully of his design approach. ‘Every corridor and every room is a bit of an adventure. Why can’t you smile with luxury? Let’s call it luxury with a laugh,’ he chuckles.

Ardbeg House in Islay, designed by Russell Sage Studio

No square metre of the 12-room Ardbeg House is the same. Each room is themed according to a story of the island or the whisky, told through literal and symbolic moves that might include a piano for a headboard or a monstrous emperor-sized bed with wrought iron snakes around the bedposts. The Signature Restaurant and the Islay Bar are a rambunctious fever dream of craft and design – materials, furniture, lighting, artworks, and ephemera vie for space and attention. The clash is real, and it feels riotous, refreshing even. Scandi-Scot, this is not.

Sage asks a valid question about the absence of joyful exuberance in luxury interior design. Of late, hospitality interiors have tended towards risk-averse specification, resulting in a rather po-faced, comfortable, bland tastefulness or gilded pretension. A decade of Pinterest-fuelled mood boards has created an echo chamber; the reference pool is shallow. Too many hotels look like diluted versions of Ett Hem or Versailles. ‘I tell my team not to source reference images on Instagram,’ Sage says. ‘We use our eyes and ears to find stories that make places interesting and special. We don't worry about furniture and colour, we begin by asking how we’d like people to feel, and how those feelings change in different areas or times of day.’

After all, Sage’s dramatic Balmorality at the Fife Arms in Braemar, festooned with antlers, art and soul, is one of the UK’s most decorated hotels for awards too. He, therefore, has the license to dictate how an interior design process translates into extraordinary results. Ardbeg House follows a successful collaboration with The Glenmorangie Company, first on Glenmorangie House in Tain, which reopened in 2021, and then on the café at the Ardbeg Distillery. Speaking with Sage and Ellie Goss, director of hospitality, alongside Caspar MacRae, CEO of The Glenmorangie Company, there is a wonderful camaraderie between them – a shared language, vision and trust between client and designer that are the perfect ingredients for creating something special and courageous.

And Ardbeg House is just that. It would be easy to get stuck describing the multitude of interesting materials and details throughout the interior world that Sage and Goss have brought to life – everything has a story behind it, and guests will love learning the lore. What’s more interesting and impressive, though, is the community engagement that Ardbeg and Sage have invited, nurtured and sewn into the project, with a view to designing an experience that is entirely of people and place. Sage did not turn in any contribution of local work. There are (currently) 20-odd Scottish manufacturers, designers, makers and artists involved. ‘It felt very important to represent what’s happening on Islay, and this is a very creative community,’ Sage explains. ‘I’ve just bought an artwork from a lady across the road and will put it up in the lobby – she wanted to be part of what we are doing, and that’s exactly what this building should be. This is just the beginning of something great – I want to come back and find more.’

‘We were keen from the outset that this should be more than a hotel,’ adds Goss. ‘We want it to be one of the best hotels in Scotland, but it’s vital it feels part of the community on Islay.’ Embedding Islay stories and talent in the fabric and design of the building is a masterstroke in helping the project feel grounded and celebratory. Operational decisions have been equally considered. The team has carefully orchestrated its food offering to be enjoyable for local people, not just as a special occasion destination.

Back in the private dining room, Sage is getting misty-eyed, describing the passion so many people have poured into the project: ‘Everyone has brought such heart and humour, care and creativity, it’s hard not to feel emotional,’ he says. ‘This is what hospitality should be about: imagination and inspiration drawn from life.’

Guests at Ardbeg House will also be ingratiated into island life and culture – this is certainly no gated monolith with blacked out windows rolling VIPs in and out under the cover of darkness. They will receive private distillery tours at 16:00 every day, and a complimentary dram of a small batch, limited edition whisky at 18:15 (Ardbeg was founded in 1815). Also on offer are tours by land and sea to understand the special culture, historic and contemporary, that makes Islay life so compelling. In this respect, Ardbeg House is a repository of island culture and a portal for experiencing the seduction, not just of Ardbeg, but of Islay too.

Ardbeg House is located a Ardbeg House, 18 Charlotte St, Port Ellen, Isle of Islay PA42 7DF.