Laphroaig 10 Year Sherry Oak Finish

Nose: band aid, freshly opened tennis ball can, mossy peat, and lurking underneath cinnamon and strawberries. Some walnut develops as well. Palate: fresh plastic toy covered in red fruit syrup. Finish: strawberry menthol, hint of citrus, beach tar, mossy peat. More vegetal than smoky. After a minute the red fruit syrup and fresh plastic toy re-emerge. A fruitier and somewhat tamer Laphroaig. Nice sweetness from the sherry cask. Complex.

Time for a real review (almost). Nose: Sherry, malt, citrus, sea salt, smoke, herbs and iodine. Palate: Sherry, baking spices, citrus, gram cracker, mixed nuts, vanilla, honey, peat in the background and latent heat. Finish: Sherry is prominent. baking spices, honey and seashore notes hold on a long time. Ultimately, delicious!

There's really no such thing as objectivity in a tasting is there? Any tasting we ever write up is always influenced by prior experience. Your mind searches for comparisons as the liquid hits your lips. What other similar experiences have I had? What's new about this? Is it greater than or less than whiskies of a similar style, age, price? If you've only had Dewar's, Cutty, and Johnnie Walker Red, you're going to have a favorite among those. Then maybe someone introduces you to Johnnie Walker Black. Or Glenlivet. Or Glenfiddich. You try the 12, the 15, the 18. Your world expands. Your old favorites are no longer your current favorite. To my mind, this is a good thing. It means one's growing, expanding the palate, recognizing there's more to life. It's time to get out, get going, see new places, try new foods. The world is large and contains multitudes! The reason I bring this up here is that about a year ago, I could see myself going 4.5 on this one. Granted that's a half star higher than I'm rating this here. It's still a Laphroaig and it's still delicious. But about a year ago, I hadn't had the Laphroaig 2021 Cairdeas PX Cask. I hadn't had the Talisker Distillers Edition. Now if we're searching for comparisons, Talisker DE's a better point to work from. The Cairdeas was 117 proof. It was much bolder and richer than either the DE or the Laphroaig 10 Sherry Oak Finish. What it lacked in an age statement, it more than made up for in power hitting. And of course, while the Cairdeas was $100, both the Talisker DE and the Laphroaig 10 Sherry Cask sell for $84.99, both are 92 proof, and what distinguishes all three, of course, is the sherry finish. Now one of my limitations here is that I couldn't tell you what the difference is between finish a peated scotch in Oloroso (Laphroaig 10 Sherry) vs. PX (Cairdeas) vs. Amoroso (Talisker Distillers Edition). If anyone would care to enlighten me as to what kind of subtle distinction this makes, please feel free to comment or to point me to page in which the distinction is made (yes, I could Google it, I suppose, and I may get around to that; I simply haven' yet). In any case, I also don't have the three lined up side-by-side, but when I opened this bottle Monday night with my dad (to watch our team get trounced), neither of us reacted in quite the same way as we did when we tasted the Talisker DE. If you haven't read my review of the DE, I mentioned that it was the kind of whisky that made me wonder why I ever drink anything else. Perhaps it was simply the mood in the room, as our defense couldn't get off the field. As we watched Washington run the ball down our team's throat. But neither of us seemed overwhelmed that night by how good this whisky is. Don't get me wrong, we weren't underwhelmed either. We liked it well enough that between us, we finished half the bottle. And what's odd, nosing it now, is that I'm not finding a whole lot of difference between this and the Talisker Distillers Edition. The nose has the sweetness of sherry mixed with a savory saline aroma that I suppose here is more band-aid and iodine whereas with the Talisker it was more bacon and sea salt. I suppose in just writing that down, you get the sense that the aroma of bacon and sea salt are likely slightly more pleasing. As it moves to the palate the sweetness becomes more prominent with the peat taking a back seat and a slight hit of chocolate creeping in, though mind you I'm also tasting this after a word dinner Wednesday where I bit off too large a steaming piece of salmon and couldn't spit it out (it was a work dinner) so I moved it back and forth between the sides of my mouth with my tongue until it was cool enough, in the process burning the entire top of my mouth until a curtain of singed flesh hung down. So, I'm at a bit of a handicap palate-wise here. I've got no complaint overall about the flavor, but the mouthfeel is a bit thin. The finish itself lingers for a decent while and is where the peat comes through most prominently, but I'm left wondering here whether the Sherry Oak finish gives it enough umph to justify paying an extra $25 over the regular Laphroaig 10 Year. After all, the original is a classic. This seems like a good one to keep around for special occasions if you can't get your hands on the Talisker Distillers Edition, but all things being equal, I have to favor the Talisker. Not that I'd turn up my nose if this were offered. In fact, my brother-in-law and dad will be back over on Sunday, and I plan to include this in the lineup I'm serving. It's solid. Very good. Just not quite excellent in the way I want it to be excellent. My advice: either go the extra $15 to get the Carideas or save yourself a quarter of a hundred dollars and hit up the original. PS. I still love you Laphroaig.