Tastes

​ The third Feis Ile sample of the evening has a beautiful caramel nose, like a Talenti ice cream. It's easy to drink neat, but a few drops of water brings out the peat. The finish is a long swirl of peat and honey. I'd mark this 4.5/5, making it my joint second favorite of the eight.

Honey's the theme of the second Feis Ile tasting tonight. It's there in the color (though lager also comes to mind). There are delicate notes of it on the nose and, once you've got through the burn of the neat alcohol, a long honey finish. With water, a subtle peat emerges, with caramel flavors and a long sherried coda.

First of eight Feis Ile specials tasted tonight at the Whisky Jewbilee masterclass in New York, and my least favorite. It's a cask strength version of the 16-year-old that's overpowering when neat but slightly sweet on the finish when diluted with a few drops of water. Finish aside, I couldn't discern much difference from the regular bottling, but fans of that may enjoy this slight twist, especially if they can withstand the punch in the face it provides straight out of the bottle.

Maybe my Master of Malt sample wasn't enough for a full appraisal, but I can't say I enjoyed this. It's a pleasing rosewood color, to be sure, and the nose is an appealing mix of beeswax and marmalade. But undiluted it's all over the place on the palate and only a little more focused with water. The finish is dry and too woody. I much preferred the 12.

Chestnuts, green apples and a long, tartly lemon finish. Really quite good.

What a curious beast. A blast of peat afloat a thin and watery base. Could work for those warm nights when you crave some bonfire with your lighter dram.

I tried the four core Paul Johns tonight at the Astor Center Whisky Spectacular and found them all thoroughly solid if unspectacular. The peated versions were the best and warrant a 3.5. This one was my favorite, narrowly edging the more heavily peated cask strength version.

Whisky festival pro tip: There's often a special bottle or two lurking among the core lineups that the distillery representatives are offering at their tables. Often it's something stashed under the table that can be coaxed out after you've paid lip service to the core range and wondered out loud how it compares to that new limited edition you've read about. Sometimes it can be hiding in plain sight, inside the tube of a regular bottling. But if you're at the Laphroaig table, check the Wellington boots. That's where, amid a peat field diaorama, I recognized the red loop of the 2016 Cairdeas just about visible inside one green wellie. And was that a golden hoop I spied in the second wellie? Could it be the new Cairdeas, I asked the kilted fellow filling glasses at the Astor Center Whisky Spectacular, who turned to be none other than brand ambassador Simon Brooking? Indeed it was, he said, fresh from the Islay festival. And what a lovely treat it turned out to be. I've posted two dismissive notes here about the Quarter Cask in as many days, but this cask strength version is a different beast. It's sweet and oily, and the drying tannins of the core version are mostly obscured by the rich honey flavors that linger. It's hard to make nuanced judgements in such circumstances, but this is unmistakably a good Laphroaig and worth checking out when it hits the stores in August.

This is a whisky of two halves -- specifically, Lore upfront and Quarter Cask on the finish. It starts off with lovely aromas of shellac and stewed fruits that continue into the same rich fruity flavors of the Lore, but then instead of the Lore's long coda of dates and figs you get the short, drying tannis of those little quarter casks. By coincidence, I tasted a sample of the Quarter Cask for the first time a day after opening the 1815, so I was immediately able to make the connection. My initial thought was that this is a similar recipe to the Lore but with younger Quarter Cask spirit replacing some of the former's older stock, but there's no mention of the smaller barrels in the marketing material. The flavor profile is also more disjointed than Lore and while a little water brings a considerable amount of focus to the taste, it's nevertheless the first bottle of Laphroaig I've bought that I wouldn't buy again. It's not a bad whisky, just completely redundant when you can buy Lore for the same price.