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.
Stop reducing the quality of good malts Diageo. Stop chill filtering your malts, don't you get it. Make money by selling products that scream quality and not watered down inferior malts. You can only fool the new drinker who has never tried a non-chill filtered, natural colour malt.
However much I would like to try Lagavulin 16, I would not for two reasons: A: Lagavulin is not matured in Islay. Lagavulin as well as Caol Ila and Talisker are transported across the Scottish waters in stainless steel vats to the mainland where they are matured with other whiskies, therefore Lagavulin, Caol Ila and Talisker have absolutely no sign of the geography of Islay in their maturity. This makes a substantial impact on the flavour of the whisky and I care about that impact because Lagavulin costs quite a lot of money. That said, Caol Ila 12 and Talisker 10 are affordable so the damage is not as steep B: The reasons stated above are acceptable if, and only if Diageo stops chill filtering and colouring Lagavulin 16. For the price point and owing to the fact that it is NOT matured in Islay, they ought to stop chill filtering and adding artificial colour. Only then would Lagavulin 16 be worth its price. Therefore at the current situation it is a rip off. Chill filtration of single malts takes away a big portion of the flavour of the whisky and that is what we are paying for, the flavour not the brand. And no one wants a mediocre product at an inflated price point. Anyone can test my claim, try any two single malts side by side, one chill filtered and the other non-chill filtered and you will know the difference is worth ranting over. As long as we keep turning a blind eye towards these big corporations by playing into their marketing gimmicks and the many useless and overrated whisky awards, we will never get our money's worth.
I had this for the first time last night, after returning from my trip to Scotland, where I decided peat is definitely my preferred taste. I describe this as having a smoky fireplace in my chest - I'm a 5'3 petite blonde and loved the experience! Can't wait to have it again ;-)
Not the pleasant palate test after I consumed this whiskey, it's really not what I expected from it. I prefer something better like Oban, Macallan or similar much better then this junk.
Simply the best
