Laphroaig Cairdeas 2018 Fino Cask - Review
Age: No age statement
Barrel type: Ex-bourbon barrels and ex-Fino sherry casks
Region: Islay
ABV: 51.8%
Price: $80
Additional details: non-chill filtered, natural color
I've been remiss in posting full reviews of bottles recently. Partly, this was due to a reduction in recent acquisitions. Mostly, however, it's just been plain old laziness. Those short, little blurbs are so much quicker to write! However, I am going to give each of the bottles that we bought in Scotland a full writeup. First up: Laphroaig's 2018 edition of its Cairdeas series, aged in Fino sherry casks.
Appearance: This whisky comes in Laphroaig's classic, no-nonsense bottle. The label color this year is a sun-faded yellow, a pleasant contrast to last year's brown, 2016's fuschia, and 2015's classic Laphroaig green.
This golden, honey-toned whisky is dead center in the spectrum of scotch colors, ranging from the pale straw yellow of ex-bourbon Lagavulin to the dark burnt sugar of well-aged GlenDronach.
Nose: This expression exhibits a lot of unusually sweet, rich notes for a Laphroaig, and much less of the typical smoke and salt. My initial impression was oatmeal or white chocolate macadamia cookies. The distillery itself identifies toasted almond as a scent, which may be what I'm sensing as macadamia. There's some oak here, but toasted rather than burnt. This is as smoke-free a nose as one will ever find from this distillery. My wife gets a strong sense of barley from this whisky, and absolutely loves it, particularly because we did the distillery tour on the day we first tried it and got to chew some of the actual barley that was floor-malting there.
Palate: There is a distinct, toasted grain or barley flavor to the palate, which is creamy and sweet, as the nose promised. I can feel the sting of salt on the edge of my tongue and lips, and on subsequent sips, this whisky becomes drier and smokier, with some lemongrass and cumin. On some nights, it seems almost too sweet and abounded with honey, while on other sips there has been a more bitter or ashy edge to it. Fino is a dry, white variant of sherry, and it interacts with Laphroaig's peated spirit in a way that's significantly different than I've detected in bottles finished in the more commonly seen oloroso or PX sherry casks.
Finish: Black tea, allspice, and woodsmoke wrap up the experience. As with most of the Cairdeas releases, there are some hints that the malt is young. I'd be surprised if this scotch has aged for more than 8 years. It has a slightly dirty, earthy note that lingers for a while at the end. Just to be clear, that's not a bad thing; it actually may be the part that most reminds me of this whisky's Islay roots.
Value for Money and Final Impressions: My wife, who is a devoted Lagavulin fan, loved this whisky so much that we've already purchased two bottles -- one on Islay itself, and one upon returning to the U.S. I wasn't as unabashed a booster of this whisky, but it is easily worth buying at its reasonable $80 retail price here in the States. The Cairdeas series, which is the most affordable of the Feis Ile special releases, has been shaky for the last two years, and 2018 Fino is a step up. Last year's cask-strength quarter cask expression was a hair too hot and prickly to reach its potential, while the previous year's Madeira was flat-out strange tasting. This year's bottle reminded me a lot of the 2014 Amontillado, which makes sense given the similarities in their upbringing.
Rating: A-