These expressions so far have been at least interesting to me thus far. Particularly appealing is the relative scarcity of Lagavulin IBs.
Minutia: Distilled in the mid-2000s, matured in 4 refill Bourbon barrels, and bottled in 2017. Reviewed blind, neat in a glencairn.
Color: Pale gold, 0.3.
Nose: Seawood/vegetal brine, iodine. Sweet fried dough.
Taste: Buttery, spicy.
Finish: Musty/stale. Earthy. Medium long.
Guess: The initial feeling on the nose was that it was familiar and I’d had a fair amount of something similar. That sense returned in the finish. The seawood had me leaning Caol Ila. That big buttery note (and then the doughy one that came into the nose after sipping) reminded me of Kilkerran Heavily Peated, so maybe a Kilkerran or Springbank, possibly the 15 Rum Wood. While it has that similarity to a Kilkerran, there’s just not enough “Campbeltown” in here. I’d guess an Elements of Islay Caol Ila, or possibly an Ardbeg.
This makes a ton of sense. It’s neat I got the bottler right, and Lagavulin shares some aspects with Caol Ila and others with Ardbeg so I can see why I was between those two. But seeing that it’s Lagavulin, and this is all ex-Bourbon, and 10-ish years old, that familiarity was a connection to Lagavulin 8. It’s pretty similar as I remember that, and while I gave it a higher score, I do think this is a bit better than the 8 due to that buttery note on the palate.
Score: 89
Musical Evocation: Apocalypse Orchestra – “The Garden of Earthly Delights”
Here are links to the other posts from this calendar:
No comments:
Post a Comment