Lagavulin Offerman Edition Guinness Cask Finish

Oh man, real spicy peat all over this thing. A little heavier handed than a 12 or 16 year, which makes sense, but still a nice oily mouth feel and huge smokiness.

Not todu bacon, thats for sure. Smoke bomb. Oak. Agressive start. Short finish.

So I missed this one the first time it came around, back when it was getting all the accolades and was still prices at $89.99 in my neck of the woods. Apparently SRP was supposed to be $10 less than that, but for some reason, Lagavulin is always a little higher than SRP in PA, na’mean? Anyway, it came back around: 5 bottles, online sale only, $99.99. And I hadn’t bought any whisky yet that month, yet even then, I was hesitant. Pulled the trigger on the second-to-last bottle. Then I got an email from FW&GS with pictures telling me one of the bottles in their shipment had broken open during shipping, and would I still like it. My bottle hadn’t been damaged, but the label, IT WAS STAINED!!!! So I took a few moments to clutch my pearls at the travesty of it all and told them of course I still wanted the fucking bottle. What do you take me for? Someone who gives a shit if a high quality bottle of scotch comes with a stained label? And I stowed it in my collection back in May for a future date. And then Father’s Day seemed appropriate. Drink it with my dad. Offerman cask seemed just like, thematically apropos. You dig? Only my sisters had invited my dad for brunch, so we couldn’t do early afternoon. Then when he got back from that, he needed a nap and my mom planned to take him to dinner at a Mexican restaurant, so I had to wait, even though I kind of like day drinking on Father’s Day. We spent an afternoon three years back with a bottle of Balvenie 12 between us and it was just a nice afternoon. I keep hoping to recreate that, but the next year, my family had our beach vacation scheduled the week of Father’s Day. And the year after that, we had him over, but we had him and my mom and my brother-in-law over, and that was great because I love family gatherings, but you know, sometimes, I just love sitting out back with my dad drinking whisky, talking about guy shit, right? Anyway, this is great whisky. It’s got the Lagavulin character, so far as I understand the Lagavulin character. I’ve only ever had the Distiller’s Edition, which is the 16 finished in PX Sherry. So the base, as I’ve always understood it, is peated, briny, oceanic, and essentially what makes it stand out from other Islay peated whiskies is that it’s more meaty. The saltiness and meatiness meeting to give it a sort of bacony quality and who doesn’t like bacon? Hell, I was a vegetarian for a decade and I never stopped thinking bacon was good. And nowadays, having returned to eating fish, I still think bacon is good. Why I don’t eat it is another conversation that’s a digression and really isn’t the point here, but this whisky has that meaty quality in spades. What the Guinness imparts to that is chocolate malt, so think salted bacon, cooked over a peat fire, covered in dark chocolate, let’s say 75% because it’s not particularly bitter, but it’s definitely not milk chocolate. The palate, in fact, is where the dark chocolate nose becomes milk chocolate, and in fact, that’s where the Guinness really shines through. There’s a lovely, sweet tone overall, that imparts a really creamy mouthfeel that mutes the peated edge and makes it taste like a peated egg cream, with the peat being very subtle, almost as if you’re drinking your egg cream next to a log fire. The finish itself is sweet too. Not peppery or smoky like a lot of Islay, and that’s another welcome departure from your standard Islay cask that, in the absence of having ever actually tasted the flagship 16 Year Lag, I’d have to say is also the influence of the cask finish. This, my friends, is what a cask finished whisky should be. The cask finish shouldn’t overwhelm or destroy the initial spirit, but should add extra dimension or depth. I do regret not getting this the first time around when it was cheaper. I don’t regret buying it when it came back around with its stained label. I’m not sure I’d be in a rush to buy it again, though ask me again if it comes back around in another year or two’s time. The Distiller’s Edition of 2023 is on shelves now, and I’m hitting that up soon. There’s 300 or so bottles in stock online and it’s not selling out too quickly so it may be another month or two before I pull the trigger on that, and I hope they don’t jack up the price in the meantime because at $108 it’s about as high as I’m willing to spend. This was a treat, an indulgence, but one worth having, and my dad agreed. I finally got to have that drink with him at the end of the night, sitting on the back deck, shooting the shit for about two hours as the dark on and Father’s Day reached its conclusion. One of these days we’ll have an afternoon to drink our cares away like we had that day a few years ago. And there will definitely be a great bottle like this, when that happens, to split between us.