I’ve always drooled over bottles of Laphroaig 25-Year-Old, and so I nearly passed out when Mick Secor, Publican of Oregon City, Oregon-based Highland Stillhouse, pulled out a bottle of the 27-Year-Old recently. I haven’t sipped on a bottle of Laphroaig 25-Year-Old in a dog’s age, but last night’s tasting notes for the 27-Year-Old are quite legible in my feverish hand, as are the impressions in my mind.
Laphroaig 27-Year-Old was released a few months back. The whisky was aged for 27 years, and then transferred into refill hogsheads before being double-matured in first-fill ex-bourbon barrels and refill quarter casks. That’s nearly three decades (count ’em) of maturation. In fact, it’s worth noting that this release was aged in Warehouse No. 1, which happens to be closest to the ocean. An extra oomph of marine air certainly found its way into my glass, born of waves lapping just below the white-washed walls.
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Tasting Notes: Laphroaig 27 Year Old
Vital Stats: Laphroaig 27 Year Old 2017; 83.4 Proof; single malt Scotch whisky; aged in refill quarter casks and bourbon hogsheads; 700 ml; priced at $750 or thereabouts.
Appearance: Yellow gold in color with fantastic beading and legwork, which testify to ye olde broth.
Nose: Smoke grips the nostrils sweetly. This followed by a gust of sea air. Laphroaig’s brilliant iodine then comes into focus, along with Hachiya persimmon, fusty hay bales, caramelized milk in a pan, white Chinese pepper, and salted macadamia nut.
Palate: Exquisite peat; lime Life Savers; Boston brown bread; and the leather cover on a very old book. In time, salted caramel comes through, along with toasted almonds. There’s just the right amount of oak tannin to impart a regal sense of decorum.
Finish: Medium to long in length, falling as it does into a dreamy montage of sweet bourbon-enhanced vanilla, peat, and citrus. The nose turns ashy in time . . . almost like a cigarette ashtray. After the last sip of whisky–sniff, sniff, boo-hoo–dried remnants in the bottom of my glass continue to haunt. Postmortem effluvium almost seems better than the living whisky had been.