Celebrating Islay Jazz Festival with a Lagavulin 2017
The Islay Jazz Festival is starting today, and we join in from afar with tasting a Lagavulin bottled especially for the occasion. I had an old one lying around, bottled in 2017. As we are not exactly spoiled with a million different core range Lagavulin releases, these special ones for the Feis Ile and Jazz Festival used to be a nice change to get a little variation in the glass. They were also notoriously hard to come by, because you always had to buy these bottles at the distillery, which is not exactly around the corner, is it? Luckily, we whisky enthusiasts manage, even if limited to a small sample, to obtain these pearls. Let us taste one! If you want to read about another Jazz bottling I tasted, click here.
Lagavulin Islay Jazz Festival 2017, bottled at 57,6 % abv
First things first: This whisky matured in refill American oak hogsheads and refill European oak butts, bottled in a batch of no less than 6000. Indeed for the Jazz Festival of 2017.
Upon Sipping: Not a super clean nose, quite a lot of brine and muddy pool water. Then an impressive tsunami of peat bursts from your glass, almost overwhelming, but we manage to grab hold of something. Lagavulin makes big whisky, it has been underlined once again with this expression of the Islay Jazz Festival of 2017. Hints of wet rope and crystal clear seawater. Beautifully ashy on the tongue, with lots of lemon and a really, really sharp bite of the alligator peaty teeth. Oh my, so strong that it almost brings tears to my eyes. Tremendously coastal, lots of maritime notes. With a few drops of water, more lemons on the nose, but always this whiff of being on deck of a yacht sailing the sea between Islay and Northern Ireland. On repeated sipping, lots of liquorice comes out to play, a strong DNA mark of good Lagavulin.
Word to the Wise: Classic Lagavulin, almost like a fired up version of the standard 16 years old, which soon will be on the market in new livery. Curious about that one, but until that time, we enjoy this small batch Lagavulin to pieces.
Score: 91 points.