Lagavulin has also expanded their offerings to 8 and 10 year standard expressions now, and deepening the product line is both smart and good for whisky lovers!
Lagavulin Offerman Edition 11 Year Old / 46%
Tasted neat
The 11 year old Lagavulin Offerman Edition is inspired by actor Nick Offerman’s love of the brand, and his character Ron Swanson in the television show Parks and Recreation. It debuted in 2019, and has been since followed up with a second edition finished in Guinness Stout beer casks for 4 months.
A press quote from Nick Offerman reads:
This 11 year Lagavulin is like a top shelf brass band…blowing smoky jazz and marching straight down your gullet. It looks great in a tutu, to boot.
And inscribed on the bottle in fine print is another Nick Offerman snippet:
I have travelled the world and sampled many attempts at pleasing nectars, but it is solely this distillation of Islay: a tiny charismatic scottish isle, that has claimed my palate: Yea, and my heart into the bargain.
- Color: 1.0 (deep copper)
- Nose: iodine, sea breeze, smoke, burning plastic, crushed almonds, honeysuckle, and turpentine
- Taste: oaky peat, some custard, butyric acid, pine sap, and thin, sallow marshmallow
- Finish: long; phenolic smoked peat smoke, wet grass, and medicine fades to vanilla
Priced slightly above the standard 16 year old, despite not having a punchy ABV, this represents a more interesting Lagavulin. The collaboration with Offerman seems to have done some good here, crafting something that is less thin and burned out, younger; a bit more alive. It is not the pure, sweet, perfect cask strength 12 year old, and it’s not the stuffy 16 year old.
Rating: 6/10
