Origin: Islay (Scotland)
Type: Blended Malt Scotch Whisky
Gradation: 53.1%ABV
Ageing casks: Ex-Bourbon
Chillfiltered: No
Additional coloring: No
Owner: Douglas Laing
Average price: € 69.00
Official website: www.douglaslaing.com
Vote: 83/100
Do you remember Christmas?
The dinners, the tours to the houses of relatives, the fights with your uncle…
In 2020 we were spared all this stuff, and it was perhaps one of the few advantages of Covid, but distilleries and producers thought not to give up their celebrations, and so here we are with another special bottling for the festive period.
Tenth Christmas version for the scurvy and peated fisherman, released in 2020 in 5,000 bottles, as always the result of an unspecified mix of Islay whiskies (of which only Ardbeg, Bowmore, Caol Ila and the usual Port Ellen droplet are declared), whose only difference with the basic version seems to be the gradation, not particularly high but declared as cask strength.
Tasting notes
Straw yellow in the glass.
Intense peat on the nose, between coastal and fleshy influences, with that mixture of herring and bacon that you expect just looking at the label. But, as always in this series, peat is never over-pressing, and in short it opens like a curtain on the aromas of yellow fruit (banana, peach, apricot, apple), lemon cream, toasted bread, mustard. Iodine and salt accentuate over time, convincingly demonstrating the origin of the blend.
Peppery and salted at the palate, with a sparkling flavor that livens the wave of vegetable smoke on fruity and sweet tones with impressions of cola, licorice, orange soda. It’s very sugary, with acrid smoke as a barrier to total unravelling. Oily and full.
Fairly long finish of off embers, fruit jelly, salt, pepper.
A nice representative of Islay, pimping enough, disengaged, with just that flick given by the highest gradation to give it a little push but without exaggeration. Made to please, and it delivers.
Reviews of Douglas Laing whisky in the blog:
Big Peat 10yo
Big Peat 33yo Cognac & Sherry Finish
Big Peat Small Batch
Old Malt Cask Ardbeg 1991 (13yo)
Old Particular Auchroisk 18yo
Old Particular The Christmas Edition 2005
Rock Island
Scallywag
Timorous Beastie 12yo
Timorous Beastie 18yo The Winter Edition