Lagavulin 8 Year Old Review - Diageo's Welcomed Volley At Whisky Reviewers

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Lagavulin 8 Year Old Review - Diageo's Welcomed Volley At Whisky Reviewers

I made the mistake of doing a blind tasting pitting Lagavulin 8 against Lagavulin 16. These two drinks could not be any different, and while the older scotch is more immediately pleasing on the nose, Lagavulin 8 Year Old is more brilliant then I would have imagined. It might even be better then Lagavulin 16, depending on your mood. It's also a big corporate middle finger to whisky writers that complain about no-age statement whisky (more on that later).

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Paul John Distillery Classic Select Cask & Peated Select Cask Reviewed

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Paul John Distillery Classic Select Cask & Peated Select Cask Reviewed

I only vaguely recall my first pour of whisky from Paul John Distillery. I was visiting London for the Whisky Exchange Show on a cold and rainy October day. We have plenty of incredible whisky shows in North America, but London wins on sheer quantity of whiskies. From a list of seven-hundred potential pours, I had made a long wish-list of whiskies to try. Paul John wasn't on the list.

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Laphroaig 18 Year Old - One of the Great Ones from Islay

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Laphroaig 18 Year Old - One of the Great Ones from Islay

Laphroaig 18 is a favourite of mine. It wasn’t long ago that you could find this release for around $75 in the United States. At that price point, it’s an insanely great buy, and quite frankly we’ll likely not ever see it sold so cheaply. While the product is largely discontinued, you might still find supplies of it in 2016 before it’s officially gone.

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Four Roses Single Barrel (LCBO Release) - Beautifully Balanced Intensity & Reasonably Priced

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Four Roses Single Barrel (LCBO Release) - Beautifully Balanced Intensity & Reasonably Priced

Many bourbon lovers rightfully obsess over Four Roses.*

The distillery uses five different yeast strains (yeast matters), and two mash-bills to create a total of ten different variations of high-rye bourbon. This allows for a lot of micro-variation and complexity in the blending process.

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Colonel E.H. Taylor Straight Rye - 95 - ★ ★ ★ ★

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Colonel E.H. Taylor championed the Bottled-in-Bond act of 1897 that served to protect bourbon drinkers in an era where poisons, flavouring, and un-aged spirit were all common additives to whisky. The designation means the whisky has been aged at minimum of 4 years in a federally bonded warehouse, bottled at least 50% ABV, and made in the same distillery during the same year.

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Colonel E.H. Taylor Barrel Proof - The Wonderfully Chaotic Bourbon

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Barrel Proof, uncut, unfiltered. This is the sort of wonderfully chaotic whisky that grabs your attention and doesn’t let it go. It’s intensely loud from start to finish, and that’s no surprise—It’s over 64% ABV (ABV changes from release to release). When doing whisky tastings, the Colonel E.H. Taylor Barrel Proof is (using the baseball term) the “closer” whisky. At the end of the night, no matter what else that you’ve had, CEHT Barrel Proof will be the standout star (Unless, maybe, you’re drinking Stagg).

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Russell's Reserve Single Barrel - A Thrill of a Whisky That Has Complexity

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To get the beauty of this drink, you need to nose it like a scotch drinker. That is, don’t breathe in, just let the vapours naturally come to you as you lift the glass to your nose. You can practically smell the soil the grain were grown in, the grains themselves, the fermentation process, and all those condensed flavours that were fortunate enough to survive distillation.

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Russell's Reserve 10 Year Old - The Scotch Drinker's Bourbon

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I started out as a single malt scotch drinker. When drinking bourbons, nosing became less important. It’s not that bourbons don’t nose well, it’s just that they generally smell very similar. That’s not the case for this whisky. T

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