The Lag

Wedged between it's more famous neighbours, Laphroaig and Ardbeg, the Lagavulin distillery sits on the south coast of the island of Islay. Call it the Costa del Scotch. You can walk from Laphroaig to Ardbeg in forty minutes or less, assuming you can walk a straight line. But you should stop after twenty minutes at Lagavulin. You may be thirsty already again by that point, but even if not, you should stop. While a dram of Laphroaig or Ardbeg shouts its flavours at you in all caps, which is undeniably exciting, Lagavulin speaks them to you in clear lines of prose, complete with punctuation, which is perhaps a more sustainable pleasure. Don't misunderstand me, The Cabinet loves its Laphroaig and its Ardbeg, but it was time to give the more restrained pleasures of Lagavulin its due. With that in mind, The Cabinet met last night to sample three bottlings of "The Lag". We killed one old bottle of Lag 16, and it was only with restraint that we did not do the same to the other, much fuller, bottles. We are masters of restraint. It is one of our special powers.

The 8 year old was up first. Is it lazy of me to simply cut and paste the notes from February of 2017 when we originally sampled this? Perhaps. But no matter:
This is a new release and is being sold as a 200th anniversary edition, celebrating the 1816 founding of the distillery. They decided on an 8 year old as a nod to the Victorian whisky writer Alfred Barnard who declared the Lagavulin 8 year old available in the 1880s to be "exceptionally fine". This was an old whisky for the time as the modern fetish for aging scotch was unknown then. Lagavulin claims to have done it's best to recreate that whisky and although we are in no position to judge the success of the recreation we did enjoy the outcome. Here the general guidance inherent in an age statement was again demonstrated: light in colour and all the brightness, sharpness and liveliness you expect from a younger whisky. Being a Lagavulin, regardless of age, there are some other expectations and these were met as well: an explosion of smoke up front, akin to inhaling deeply from a cigar, followed by, and strongly contrasted by, a delicate sweetness. It takes a little getting used to, but once you do you want more. And more. (Although your partner may regret it as you begin off-gassing the smoke...)

It may be of interest to note that the explosion of smoke described above was less in evidence now. Apparently, two years in a half-empty bottle does something to its contents. Regardless, we still wanted more and in fact had another half dram at the end of the evening.

If two years in a half-empty bottle does something, then eight must do more. In looking back it seems the last time we tasted the Lagavulin 16 was eight years ago. The effect was only evident in comparison to our last bottle, but before I get to that let me just summarize the Lag 16 by saying that it is a marvelous whisky. It has been finished in sherry casks, which lends a russet colour, sweetness and fruity notes to it. The combination of sweetness and peat can be off-putting, but Lagavulin handles it deftly, creating a very pleasurable balance.

The last bottle was a brand new Lagavulin "Distiller's Edition". It had no age statement, but research indicates that was essentially a 16-year-old. This was fascinating as it had all the same elements as the old Lag 16, but with everything brighter, sharper, livelier and more well defined. Age - and presumably specifically oxygenation - had buffed the old remnant whisky down, sanding off all these elements. Still lovely, but the new Distiller's Edition was lovelier. This is what a sherry cask conditioned Lagavulin should be. It occupies that Goldilocks territory between the punch in the mouth of its Costa del Scotch neighbours and the limp handshake of some on the mainland. Well done Lagavulin.

And well done Cabinet! We enjoyed all of our whiskies, we marveled at optical illusions and we swapped tales of injuries and tales of strange doings Father's Day. All was right with the world.

Slainte!