Once a year the lovely isle of Islay has a week long festival celebrating the island, island life and it's distilleries. Accordingly, them distilleries release a special Islay festival whisky to celebrate. Most of it you can only buy from the distillery and then a wee while after they'll release them in the web for their "friends" or "members" to purchase. Although you have to be fairly fast as the 10,000 bottles or so will sell like the proverbial hot cakes. Any unopened bottles are then required to be re-sold on e-bay or other internet auction sites for at least double the money. Fairly simple really.
I managed to crack open a bottle of Laphroaig Cairdeas Origin before it doubled in price or something. Named Origin as it celebrates 18 years of Friends of Laphroaig by vatting together some of the original casks that were used for the very first Cairdeas (so about 17-18 years), alongside some stuff they've been maturing in Quarter Casks (for about 7 years I've been told). No age statement, non-chill filtered and bottled at a very respectable 51.2%.
I've been fond of the previous Cairdeas releases (although I've lost any tasting notes I ever had for them I've still got the odd empty bottle or two) so I was fairly happy to have a nag on this one and this time pay a bit more attention.
The first thing to remember is that Laphroaig only make one type of whisky: and that's Laphroaig. I know that sounds obvs but with a couple of exceptions the new make that rolls off the stills is pretty much consistently the same. So it's really the casks that are going to create the various flavour profiles (which is why you've got Quarter Casks and Triple Woods out there).
So with this in mind it's surprising to note that the traditional peat reek and sharpness that you associate with Laphroiag is tempered surprisingly well. On the nose it takes a distinct back seat with a real sweet citrus and orange aroma screaming out of the blocks first of all that it kind of takes you by surprise a bit. The peat and smoke is there but the iodine and seaweed really are not. There's also a creaminess to it, which after kicking a few ideas around came up with a cross between baked alaska and creme brulee. It's got that hot ice cream thing going on. There's a lot going on with the nose and that kind of transfers to the taste although doesn't live up to the layered and complexity of it. There's toasty and oaky flavours with the peat again taking a supporting role, subdued somewhat but not steam-rollered as it is in the Triple Wood. There's a distinct bitterness in the finish that clings to the sides of the mouth and fades to a burnt plastic, plimsol, rubber, tarpaulin edge I've sometimes found in other Islay malts.
A lovely interesting take on the Laphroaig riff and one that, for me, works a lot better than the Triple Wood gig. Perhaps not the most consistently balanced of any of the expressions but a huge amount of fun and one that I'll have to come back to again to double check my thoughts.
Post photo soon.
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