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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Fabulous whisky. Even better than Laphroaig. Slightly more rounded, with extra depth and complexity. Would buy it much more frequently, except Laphroaig is half the price, and for this money, it just can't compete with Uigeadail. It means I rarely get to sample it, but that does make it all the more pleasurable when I do. Awesome tasting room on their distillery tour too. Check it out.
Love every drop of the bottle. Never fails to bring a smile to my face each time I settle down to A Lagavulin 16.
Laphroaig 10 was my "go-to" until I had a dram of the Lagavulin 16. If you're new to Scottish whisky you likely won't understand the complexity of Islay single malts. This is top-notch Islay - anyone that says otherwise doesn't get it.
If this is the type of whisky you like (smoke, fire, an entire peat bog thrown in, but also some beautifully subtle background flavours if you seek them out), you will definitely enjoy this. As per others of this style, it is for dyed-in-the-wool whisky drinkers. Your non-whisky drinking friends will probably not enjoy it all, but it is excellent. However, having compared this side-by-side with current production Ardbeg 10 and Laphroaig 10, I am convinced it isn't worth the extra spend, and I definitely prefer both of these classic Islays to this. The Lagavulin 16 has a slightly more obvious honey-like, almost cognac-ish note, but other than that I think it is a bit one-dimensional compared with say, the Laphroaig. It could be because the Laphroaig is brighter in character, an has more floral notes that make it seem more interesting. I am still confident that, for this style of whiskey (take no prisoners, assault on the senses), the Ardbeg 10 and the Laphroaig 10 are really excellent for the price and I see no reason to deviate other than to try other fine whiskeys! Was hoping to find this amazing, but sadly it isn't - it is, however, very good whiskey, of course. For my regular excellent-but-affordable whisky, I would probably pick the Ardbeg 10 every time and can recognise it blindfolded.
This is exactly what Scotch should taste like. Amber in your glass then you smell the smokiness when you first sniff your pour and then taste it as it spreads over your tongue.... fabulous!
