Lagavulin 20 Year Fèis Ìle 2020

So dram 4 of my day off. I should note I reviewed this over on Mike's Whisky Reviews with well Mike but this is another bottle another day and another review. Hopefully I have a similar response today for distiller but you never know. Nose - The nose is beautiful lagavulin. Slight hints of peach over what mike loves to refer to as aristocratic peat. Red berries and sugars are coming in from the PX sherry casks. Some waxy notes and a big bold kick of smoke billows off the glass. Taste - A lovely lagavulin peat and malt driven by sherry. That said there is no balance of play here. It's a bit of a mess. Flavors just feel thrown together and you get odd off oak notes and strange sugars and peat elements just almost randomly. Water thankfully saves the day and pulls this one back into reality. Now with water it's a clean open with sweet lagavlin peat that really can't be better described than by their name and their name alone. Still it remains a touch bitter and the oak isn't playing nice. I have to say this is a firmly disappointing pour of well aged lagavulin. There's no lack of flavor or power here. It's just a poorly put together flavor profile. 3.0 here. yeah it's still quality good whisky but a hard pass at the prices this one is going for.

Soft gentle and salty old peat, peppery and juicy. Highlight of the night

Quite a difference from the 16y old standard bottling. The smokiness is there, but subtle. Sweet and fruity nose. Really pleasant. Even though bottled at high strength, its 20 years of maturation mellowed this scotch beautifully. Complex layers of flavors including dark fruits, marzipan sweetness, all wrapped in gentle smoke. I love the thick mouthfeel. Really impressed with this bottling. Perhaps disappointing for the die-hard 16y old Lagavulin fans, but I really appreciate this more gentle and complex expression that still clearly bears the Lagavulin signature. Well done!