Expert Review
Wine Enthusiast 90 Points | Soy sauce, olive brine, peat, honey, oloroso Sherry, brewer's yeast, bread dough, barley malt and cigar smoke in the bouquet. The flavor that magically includes the innate intense peatiness of Islay malts and the masterly employment of oak barrels phase defines "classy Islay.? Concludes sweetly, without sacrificing the tangy, astringent peatiness that is inherent. Gorgeous.
Enjoy reading this review of Laguvulin 16 year old written by Margarett Waterbury - TheWhiskeyWash.com
Tasting Notes:
Lagavulin 16-Year-Old is satisfying in a way that many other things are not. You might not like it, but if you enjoy whisky, it is essential for you to buy a bottle of Lagavulin 16, and drink it. It might take you the rest of your life, but it’s important.
Appearance: A deep, dusky amber.
Nose: Oh, geez. There’s peat, first of all, a big, pungent whack of it, laced with smoked fish and driftwood and salty rocks. But underneath that, there’s a great big ocean of sweet, caramelized malt, all baked apples and cobbler crust. Plenty of industrial character, too—soot, rubber, hot electrical equipment, and that magical, grimy petrichor of a dirty urban sidewalk after a summer’s rain.
Palate: You know that saying “turns to ashes in your mouth?” This is like the opposite. At first, it’s like a mouthful of recently extinguished ashes—charred, powdery, astringent—but then a lush, maritime garden quickly comes into Technicolor focus. Basically, Lagavulin 16 tastes just like a real boat: varnish, diesel, salty nets, ocean spray, and the sticky lanolin-rich smell of a thick wool sweater a hardworking man has been wearing one too many days in a row. Over several minutes in the glass, ghosts of fruit emerge—orange and red cherry, mostly—but never seem to break through the low-hanging haze. That’s alright – a suggestion is enough.
When people talk about Scotch whisky, maritime imagery comes up a lot. So let’s start with a beach metaphor.
Wonderful Glenmorangie is like visiting a beach in San Diego. It’s great! It’s 85 degrees, it’s sunny, the water is warm, and everybody’s having a fantastic time. Lagavulin is like a visit to the Oregon Coast. Describe the experience objectively—it’s cold, it’s grey, it’s rainy, there’s not much to do and certainly no place to swim without a dry suit or a death wish—and some might wonder why bother going at all. To others, there’s nowhere else in the world they’d rather be.
Sunny beaches are terrific. But sometimes you need an experience with a little more grit, something that reflects the grimy, complex, trying, sometimes objectively bad experience of real life. For times like that, there’s Lagavulin. It’s peaty, medicinal, pungent, smoky, a Band-aid factory in the throes of catastrophic meltdown, and when you really need it, nothing else will do.
< Show Less
