God blessed the earth when he made Scotland and the Scots blessed the lord with Lagavulin.

This is one of my favorite single malts.  I was introduced to this around new years in India at a family reunion on my wife’s side on the family.  One of her cousins from CA brought a bottle of Lagavulin 16 year with him.  We all had a shot and after that I think I polished off the entire bottle one ounce at a time.  This scotch brings me back to my childhood.  Not because I drank Lagavulin, I did not of course.  Neither did any member of my family, my parents have never drank alcohol a day in their life and don’t keep it in the house.  It brings me back to my childhood because I used to love building and painting plastic models and I also used to oil paint.  The smell of Lagavulin reminds me of the sweet smell of Testors model paint, Grumbacher oil paints and paint thinner, and thickener.  My room smelled like that all the time.  Also, since my room was in the basement it was a little musty, the smell of old slightly moldy books is also here in this scotch.

The nose is strong, smoky, musty, grassy (or peaty).

The taste is also strong with definite presence of liquorice, salty, turpentine, smoky peat.  The flavors are perfect and oddly enough, thought it is a very strong scotch it doesn’t burn or leave a bitter or burning after taste.  It’s actually pretty damn smooth.  The after taste is a bit salty and rich with peat and medicinal flavor.

Lagavulin have a very singular taste, I’d know it anywhere.  There is not a lot of complex dimensionality to this like I find in Laphroaig 25 year.  But it’s the perfect taste.  I don’t know what they did but they better keep doing it.  This is nectar of the gods.

copyright 2014 David R Bergman