Laphroaig 34 yo 1975/2010 Gentle Noses #1035 Jack Weibers vs Laphroaig 20 yo 1965 Intertrade ~ 1985
I know people who can’t handle any peaty whisky but when I give them a 70s Laphroaig, they discover they do like it very much after all. Is it just the peat or has something else changed from then?
Laphroaig 34 yo 1975/2010 Gentle Noses #1035 Jack Weibers 40.6%
Nose: Gentle is an accurate descriptor. Dry crumbled peat on a window still – imagine it’s sort of lost its ‘reek’ but still retains an earthy depth. Just a bit of salted ham and brine. A wonderful surprise however are the shades of tropical fruit in here. Not full blown by any measure, but they sit in a second dimension on the gentle peat, and the very fine wispy dry smoke. In between there are these flickering nuances of old pine, camphor shavings, cold ashes, drowned wood and more salted something. The profile is exquisite and a high water mark for Laphroaig, but this one has seen its glory days come and go.
Palate: No still alive. Quite a lot all at once, like it’s trying tell you something before it expires. Salty licorice candy, a mellow candied ginger buzz, brine, shades of tropical fruit again. Dried lemons on some sort of gourmet seaweed with little pockets of brine. Empty tobacco tins. Old oaky tannins. Really quite earthy with these dank wood, earthen floors, bung cloth notes.. really quite a damp and dank feel to it.Must have been magnificent if caught 10 years ago.
Finish: Ah finally showing it’s tiredness, not a very long finish. Raw shellfish, lemon, rock salt, while still somewhat mildly smokey.
Laphroaig 20 yo 1965 Intertrade 50.4% ~ 1985
Nose: Old peat, deep earthy, danky, musty you might say. The phenolics are absolutely buzzing. The fruit in here is the sort on it’s way to mush in a compost bin. Much better than it sounds of course. Black cakey mud. Then the sea blows in to freshen everything. Diesel smoke and oil cans. Tar, sea soaked ropes. Burnt out cigars. The most concentrated builders tea you can pour into a thermos. Camphorous incense and some sort of salty-mentholated medicinal rub for fishermen.
Palate: Actually the sea speaks first, salty dirty brine with muddy sand on boat bottoms. A wealth of surging phenolics flood in: with names we already know like tar, black smoke and tobacco etc. It is gigantuan. The party’s right here but eventually it does calm down, becoming cold-hot and more refined even: cold embers, stale ashes, polished oak, rock salt and shellfish platter. Salted lemon makes a late arrival. Such immensity and such development. Emotive.
Finish: Forever, salty, somewhat fermenty, diesel smoke and tar, lemons again.. Bar setting distillate from a top notch distillery at its prime. If I simply had to name a but… I can only say I would have expected a bit more tropical fruit.
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