Scotland Road Trip 2018 - Day Six (Laphroaig Open Day and Glencoe)
Our bittersweet last day on Islay began at my personal favorite distillery, Laphroaig.
We arrived before the official 10 am start to the Open Day, but were on a tight schedule because we had a 12:30 ferry departing from Islay back to mainland Scotland. By the time we arrived, a long line of Laphroaig fanatics already had formed.
There were even drones buzzing overhead thanks to some Chinese tourists. Hopefully they got some great birds' eye shots of the distillery and its gorgeous bay! The distillery handed out a generous amount of swag for everyone as they filed in, including free Laphroaig water bottles and miniature glencairn glasses. One of the unique but worthwhile features at Laphroaig is a series of outdoor water faucets that allowed us Feis Ile celebrants to fill our bottles and stay hydrated throughout the day.
Although he's a bit hard to spot, we got one more look at Gary the swan, who was a regular presence at the distillery each of the three times we came. He was hard to spot in my quick snaps because he was relatively far out from the inner shore, but I put the focus on him in the shot below:
Our feature activity on Open Day was the Filling Fair, which was Laphroaig's name for a carnival-esque event where they put together various tables offering pours of different Laphroaig expressions and drinks and a series of fun games that guests could play to earn prizes. Each fair ticket came with four drams of your choice and four games, for only 15£! We'd already signed up for two tickets online, but I bought a third while there because we were having such a good time.
The tables I can recall were:
A travel retail table featuring An Cuan Mor, PX Cask, and Four Oak;
A table featuring two single casks from 2005 and 2006, exclusively bottled for this year's fair;
A table with Laphroaig food pairings with Lore (fruitcake), Select (white chocolate), and Triple Wood;
A table with Laphroaig cocktails;
A table with old Laphroaig Cairdeas bottlings, including the original 2008, 2011's Ileach, and 2016's Madeira Cask; and
A final table with Laphroaig 25, Highgrove (a 12-year old rendition of Laphroaig specially bottled for Prince Charles's Highgrove Gardens estate), and the original Laphroaig 10 Cask Strength Batch 001.
The tickets were a great value, especially considering a person could in theory get four pours of Laphroaig 25 (a $500 bottle of whisky) if he didn't care at all about variety. The games also were great fun. They included stacking misshapen pieces of peat (with 6 or more, you got another dram), which proved to be my favorite, and a game where you tried to throw small rings onto the necks of Laphroaig bottles a few feet away (the whisky version of beer pong, I suppose). Along the way, we managed to sample quite a few delicious drams and bring more home with us.
Laphroaig 10 Cask Strength, Batch 001 (57.8% ABV) - Sweet mother of mayhem, this is the Platonic Laphroaig. The Ur-Laphroaig. People still talk about this original batch of cask-strength, and I can see why. The nose is everything that everyone writes about when they review Laphroaig: vanilla, phenols, smoke, and brine. There's also a unique note of chocolate-covered pretzels. It exhibits a thick mouthfeel that highlights oak, caramel, salt and pepper, iodine, and again those chocolate-covered pretzels! The finish is warm and medicinal, with plenty of smoke and bitter dark chocolate. Heavenly Laphroaig, who art in Islay. A+
Laphroaig Cairdeas 2008 (55%) - This was the first Cairdeas release that coincided with Feis Ile and the beginning of a spectacular series of annual limited editions. The basic description is that it's mostly quarter-casked whisky, with a few significantly older (17-year old) sherry butts mixed in. Sharp, bright wood smoke and coastal scents, including sea salt, make for a fragrant opening, like kindling lit on a cold beach. The palate is medicinal, unsurprisingly, with a healthy dose of citric acid that's reminiscent of Ardbeg. The finish, however, is pure Caol Ila: dry, bitter, and very ashy. The dram as a whole is a little too dry and acidic throughout, and feels like an odd doppelganger for other famed Islay distilleries. I don't really detect the sherry much; it may be that this bottle, which has been around for 10 years or so, has oxidized a bit too much. B
Laphroaig An Cuan Mor (48%) - The name of this travel retail exclusive means "the big ocean," and this dram kind of reminds me a piece of leather, toughened through successive soaks in seawater and dried out in the hot sun. The distinguishing finishing feature of this one is purportedly finishing in virgin European oak casks, but I'm not sure that they benefit the final product. Its nose features wax, oil, buttered rolls, and smoke. The palate is salty, perhaps too much so, with vegetal peat and dry, bitter vegetables like brussel sprouts cooked without oil. It ends on a dry coda of herbal peat, sour lemon, and bitter oak. This is an expensive dram at $100 or more in airports and duty-free shops, and I think it's a pretty bad value considering the excellence of other Laphroaigs. B-
Laphroaig Highgrove 12 (46%) - It would be 100% accurate to call this a slightly stronger, slightly older version of Laphroaig 10. But, on the other hand, it's much more, and has its own fascinating story. The Cliffnotes version is that Prince Charles loves Laphroaig, his favorite whisky, so much that he has granted it a royal warrant. As part of their thanks to him, they bottle some particularly nice 12-year old whisky to sell at Highgrove Gardens, one of his estates. People, including myself, often say "medicinal" to describe Laphroaig, and this packs a meaty, peaty, powerful medicinal punch. The bourbon cask lends this whisky some vanilla notes as well. Not as much brine or seaweed as I get in other Laphroaigs. This whisky is only available in the UK, where it retails for a hefty 70£, where I think other Laphroaigs offer a better value. A-
After leaving Laphroaig, it was a true road trip day: first the two-hour ferry back to the mainland, and then a long, meandering drive through the western coast of Scotland and the beginning of the true Scottish Highlands. The scenery was breathtaking for much of the drive, happily, almost beyond description. To one side, we had the sapphire sea; to the other, craggy Scottish mountains covered with gorse and spring wildflowers. Around just about every bend, we'd see fields where flocks of sheep grazed and whiled away the long, languorous days (with sunset around 9:30 pm, they were in no rush!).
After about two hours or so, we made a quick stop in Oban to see the distillery that shares the town's name. Although I'm not the biggest fan of their own whisky, they're known for an upstairs tasting bar that pours a wide cross-section of Diageo's single malt whiskies, including some of their rare Flora & Fauna collection, which are rare single malt bottlings of distilleries that mostly are devoted to making blended whisky. We were able to try a few more drams here and then also took two samples away with us.
Caol Ila Distillers Edition (43%) - This might be one of the best value Islay whiskies out there. The additional maturation adds some more richness to this dram and heightens its family resemblance to its cousin, Lagavulin. The nose features brine, classic Caol Ila sweetness, and orchard fruit. The palate is mellow honey, warm bonfire smoke, and a slight herbal grassiness, combining to form a rich and complex whole. The end ties together toasted oak and coffee. Like a gentler Lagavulin 16, particularly at the end. A
Strathmill 12 Flora & Fauna (43%) - Strathmill is almost exclusively a blending component, and I can see why here. This is a solid malty base that will allow other whiskies to perform the starring role in a blend. Released as part of the Flora & Fauna line, this is a solid session dram but nothing more. The nose is a classic generic Highland nose of mild honey, oats, and moderate minerality. The palate is sweet, like skipping straight ahead to dessert and enjoying an apple pie and a glass of sherry. B-
Dailuaine 16 Flora & Fauna (43%) - Diageo flavor maps place Dailuaine at the far end of the richness spectrum, even past Macallan and other whiskies aged exclusively in sherry butts. That's a pretty accurate description, this is a sherry bomb to the extreme, and perhaps that's why it has to be moderated by the influence of other whiskies in a blend. Medjool dates and cherries were the most distinct notes, so it's arguably lacking in complexity. Nonetheless, I'm surprised Diageo doesn't release this one more widely, as I could see people who love sherried whiskies enjoying this one. I can only imagine what a dessert it would taste like if bottled at cask strength. B+
Oban Little Bay (43%) - Oban's single malts just do not fit my palate, I suspect. This whisky has an amusing name because "Oban" is Gaelic for "Little Bay," referring to the area where the town and distillery are found. In other words, this whisky's full name means Little Bay Little Bay. This is the apple orchard strained into a glass: apple cider on the nose, applesauce dashed with cinnamon on the palate, and the lingering finish that adds the slight bitterness of apple skin. It's a forgettable experience, if not an unpleasant one. B-
We stopped for the night at a Creag Mhor Lodge, a pleasant, family-run hotel that occupies an old country house and has a mean whisky bar. Right on the side of the road on the shores of Loch Linnhe not far from the valleys of Glencoe, it also boasts quite a sweeping view.
The impressive bar at the Creag Mhor Lodge
The gorgeous Loch Linnhe just after sunset