Laphroaig 1981, 27 years, 100/736, 56.6% abv.

Bottled from 5 oloroso sherry casks. There is also another release with a different abv. I will later find out that Japan has a few of this more rare release of the 27 year olds.

Nose: dried stale toast, light burnt coffee, light burnt vanilla, well bodied. After some time there is a line of smoke, smells like jaicama (分过) soup, mountain yam?, mellows out significantly.

Palate: very dry, initial palate is like cognac, mid palate starts with wood and builds into wet old steamed lotus leaves, but the back palate has a sweet element in there to accompany that old lotus leaf flavor that makes it more bearable, slight smoke profile through the mid and back palate, but its basically moist wood throughout.

Finish: short, wet old steamed lotus leaves, wood, no smoke.

Dry glass: chalk.

Wow, surprisingly no smoke or peat, but I guess that is expected for older Laphroaigs and other great Islay malts. It's only a wood flavor profile that is slightly oiled up, no smoke, no peat, no fruit, nothing sweet. Disappointing. What happened? Storage conditions? I actually revisit this at another bar in Japan later and it was excellent... so I suspect this bottling might have had issues or my senses might have been very confused. No idea what happened. Feels like C level, but I'll give it a benefit of a doubt just because the label says Laphroaig.

Grade: B-

Malt maniacs, 92 points on 1 review
Lawhiskeysociety, A from 2 reviews

Image courtesy of Eric Yee.

Eric Yee

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