There’s peat, first of all, a big, pungent whack of it, laced with smoked fish and driftwood and salty rocks. Vital Stats: 16 years old, single malt, somewhere around $70 at retail, give or take. Photo by Margarett Waterbury, image copyright The Whiskey Wash. In addition to the use of peat-smoked barley from the nearby Port Ellen Maltings, the distillers at Lagavulin credit relatively long fermentation times (at least 55 hours) and a slow secondary distillation process as key aspects to developing Lagavulin’s unique flavor.

All of Lagavulin’s distillate is made with heavily peat-smoked malt, giving its products that signature reek and pronounced maritime character that leads many to point to it as the canonical Islay whisky. It was founded in 1816, and eventually made its way into the Diageo portfolio, where it’s one of the six whiskies to make up the Classic Malts of Scotland series. Lagavulin, located on the southern coast of the island of Islay, is one of the world’s most famous Scottish distillers. It’s peaty, medicinal, pungent, smoky, a Band-aid factory in the throes of catastrophic meltdown, and when you really need it, nothing else will do. But sometimes you need an experience with a little more grit, something that reflects the grimy, complex, trying, sometimes objectively bad experience of real life. To others, there’s nowhere else in the world they’d rather be. Describe the experience objectively-it’s cold, it’s grey, it’s rainy, there’s not much to do and certainly no place to swim without a dry suit or a death wish-and some might wonder why bother going at all. Lagavulin is like a visit to the Oregon Coast. It’s great! It’s 85 degrees, it’s sunny, the water is warm, and everybody’s having a fantastic time. Wonderful Glenmorangie is like visiting a beach in San Diego. When people talk about Scotch whisky, maritime imagery comes up a lot.

Macallan 12 tasting notea