85
score
whiskyfun.com
September 05, 2010
Isn’t it amazing that our German friends managed to put their hands on a 1975 Laphroaig? Colour: pale gold. Nose: imagine you take a bucketful of sea water and then add quite a few ingredients to it: grapefruits, mushrooms, pine resin, tincture of iodine, hessian, a little diesel oil, bitter almonds, a little linseed oil, lilies of the valley, eucalyptus oil, bits of new tyres, some wax, old papers, one wee wet dog (I owe you one, dogs)… Stir well and there, you have it. The peat got much more discreet after all these years and I must say it could as well have been a relatively light old Ardbeg in my opinion, such as the 30yo ‘Very Old’. It’s pretty complex! Mouth: good attack, almondy, phenolic, very pleasantly resinous, citrusy and tarry, but breaks off the action after say, four seconds. Quite meteoric! Yet, the profile is perfect and extremely enjoyable, it’s just that it’s probably lost a lot of steam throughout the years. Finish: very short but perfect as far as flavour types are concerned. Comments: I think it’s a very interesting old Laphroaig, very ‘educational’. It didn’t become flawed, too oaky or unbalanced at all, it just became, well, very short on the palate. This baby will delight any Laphroaig freaks who’ll have… a good memory ;-). I did like it (what did I like, by the way?)
