Released in 2004, this bottling was aged for around five years before being finished in a quarter cask for several months, the size of the cask is quite small, thus does not require such a long maturation. This remains a truly great achievement from Laphroaig.
Oily and buttery nose, with toffee, nuttiness, hickory, bicarbonate of soda, rum and raisin ice cream and zest.
Big rush of sweetness, in fact it’s an explosion of sweetness, with fiery chilli heat, TCP, sweet cereals and a touch of cola syrup.
Medium-length, but becomes fruity, with custard and cigar smoke.
Awesome
Hot, short, thin and rough. I'd rather drink Bells than this.
This is awsome,huge,simply perfect.The true taste of islay,salty and medicinal,fruity...peat and sea at its most.It share with ardbeg uigeadail the first place of my favourite malts.Simply sublime,a single sip puts you in brackish Scottish fog.Love it.
First off, I'd have to say the peat levels are distinctly less than the 10. Perhaps not fair to compare directly but it's hard not to! Still, it is definitely peaty and has the signature medicinal and smoke notes from the distillery. It is a very oily whisky and also very sweet; the rum and raisin and cola syrup notes above are spot on. Can take a lot of water (which it needs imo) and I found this much more enjoyable as the bottle went down; the air seemed to marry the flavours together and bring out a lovely sweet complexity. Quite oaky too. To the reviewer below: Fair enough but the good folk of developing nations 'fall for' lots of things . . . do you need the big, fast car or the man on a horse logo on your shirt? Not really, but we buy them because we can. Makes me feel happy and grateful every time I am able to buy and enjoy good quality and unique whisky such as this :)
You fell for it. As the growing middle class in developing nations develop a taste for whisky, supplies of well-aged bottles are being consumed faster than they can be replaced. In steps the marketing folks, and voila, you now have a 5-year old whiskey aged additionally for several months in a smaller cask selling for the price of a 10 year old whiskey. It's magic, it's marketing, and it's got some of you fooled.
