Lagavulin 16 Year Old is truly a benchmark Islay whisky. It’s loved for its deep, earthy, and maritime character with rich notes of dried fruit, vanilla, and smokiness that comes from Islay peat but is more akin to Lapsang Souchong tea in profile.
Before Lagavulin 16, the distillery did have a 12-year-old single malt. But when Diageo launched the Classic Malt series in the 1980s, Lagavulin 16 Year Old was introduced and became the distillery's flagship bottling. It received a boost in popularity after featuring in Parks and Recreation as a favourite drink of Nick Offerman’s character Ron Swanson. Offerman has since collaborated with the distillery on several occasions.
If you're looking for a food pairing for this beauty, try intensely flavoured salty blue cheeses, which complement the intense, peat-rich, sweet and salty character of this Lagavulin wonderfully.
More like Lapsang Souchong tea than Lapsang Souchong! One of the smokiest noses from Islay. It's big, very, very concentrated, and redolent of iodine, sweet spices, good, mature Sherry and creamy vanilla. Stunning.
Very thick and rich. A massive mouthful of malt and Sherry with good fruity sweetness, but also a wonderful sweetness. Big, powerful peat and oak.
Long, spicy finish, figs, dates, peat smoke, vanilla.
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To me this is an absolutely superb whisky. I had been drinking an 8 year old Caol Ila before I bought a small bottle of this to sample. By comparison it was so unbelievably smooth and nuanced, and I had to do everything in my power not to finish the whole bottle in one sitting. I had no reservations about buying another bottle and currently is probably my favourite whisky.
Wonderful. Taste like leather smells. Full flavor hearty in the mouth and smooth with very little alcohol burn so you can enjoy the flavor.
My first Islay whisky definitely chose a great starting point, really nice smoky and complex flavour.
The best Classic Single Malt Whisky
Good whisky but not as good as the reviews suggest, in my opinion. I feel it relies on it’s smoke and peat flavour to impress, without too much else going on. It has a certain dryness and some oak flavour. The smokiness tends to disappear the more the bottle goes down.
