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.
Nose: Full and ritch iodine. Peat. Classic sea note (salty, tangy, rotten seaweed) There is a little sherry note in the backround. There is meat on the nose, smoked meat, pork chops, fish, etc There also are some spices and wood notes Overtime the iodine starts to mellow down, same with the peat. Now there is a little more sherry and coastal notes. Palate: Full impact with a lot of great rich notes. Iodine, coastal, oaky, and in the background some sherry notes (little plum) Its spicy, there are a bunch of spices. Nutmeg and a little cinnamon. Meaty, something smoked from a pig? with some fish. Finsih/aftertaste: Now the barrel kicks in, chocolate, sherry notes. Deep full rich milk chocolate, almost lile a pudding. There is also oakyness, not to much. Then this meaty feeling keeps hanging arround. Its a really good whisky, I dont add any water, in my opinion it doesn't need it, but if you want you can add some, it can handle it. When you leave this in the bottle sitting with about 3/4 left for a couple weeks/months it gets really rich and there is more meat and chocolate and sherry. Overall an amazing whisky and I am going to buy more. Its a perfect product but I would love to see a little more abv and natural colour, normally I wouldn't give a whisky with lower abv and colour added a 10/10 but the nose, finish, palate/aftertaste and of course the value is amazing so yes, this gets a 10/10 for me and it will always be one of my favourites. -Cheers!
To much of a smokey taste
Take a super high quality single malt Scotch whisky, sit it on your wood-fired grill for oh, say 45 minutes, and taste a miraculous transformation...that's Islay malt (don't ever really do this!!) and, more specifically, the king of Islay malts. I don't dislike Highlands, Campbeltowns, or Lowlands but if I were restricted to one whisky (or even one whiskey) Lagavulin would be my hands-down choice! The smoke and peat of the process, the influence of the hundreds-of-millions of years-old rocks, the char of the old oak casks... that's the heart and soul of a satisfying dram. Nothing better!
just the right amount of everything with a long finish that just makes you want another one
Smokey, sweet and savory, mouthwatering, slightly medicinal from the distinctive peat from the Isla shores that serves up this delicious and intoxicating love lava. You can't go wrong with Lagggy 16!
