Longrow 18 Year

To paraphrase Vesper Lynd from Casino Royale: There are whiskies and there are whiskies, this is the latter. But more on that in a minute. Before this I’d never had a Longrow, and my experience with Springbank as a whole has been, sadly, limited to a precious few expressions. So when I came across this 2018 bottling of Longrow 18 year old at auction I just couldn’t resist. For the low low price of $110 (plus a 10% buyers fee, 3% insurance fee and a hefty shipping charge) the bottle was mine. I was deciding which bottle to open for my next Dapper Drams review and fate lead me here. This 18 year old single malt from Campbeltown is bottled at 46% ABV and is non chill filtered and natural color of an amber bronze. The maturation come from 60% refill sherry butts and 40% fresh bourbon barrels. Less than 100 casks per year are filled for the Longrow line, so this is a limited annual release. Right away the nose let’s you know that this is a different kind of single malt. Elegant, mature peat balanced with sherry, a savory meatiness, lemon and orange citrus/oil. They say let a whisky rest 1 minute in the glass for every year in the cask before approaching it. This one needs about 50% more to shine. Once it rests you will get old oak worn smooth, apples, plums, dark cherries and dates. Sweet molasses BBQ sauce, leather, pipe tobacco and creamy vanilla. Lightly salty, ginger, sulfur/spent matches and a light chalky/mineral note. Toasted marshmallows, dark chocolate with cayenne powder (but not hot), chili powder and chocolate licorice. Herbal at times with basil, oregano and mint. Hot fudge, caramel and toffee with a hint of strawberries and black licorice. The palate arrives with some peppery spice up front, followed by luxurious peat smoke and dark sherry. Molasses, walnuts, chocolate sauce, hazelnut and milk chocolate. Ginger, old polished oak, tobacco, leather. Caramel, caramelized peaches, juicy raisins, dates and figs. Meaty, sulfuric, slightly tannic and bitter but as a positive note. Chili spice, Worcestershire sauce, basil. Cigar ashes, lapsang souchong tea with honey and vanilla. A medium to full bodied mouthfeel that is oily, thick but silky, mouthwatering and fabulous. The finish is medium to medium long at times with peat, chocolate, molasses, sulfur, black tea and orange oil. This scotch is a game changer...quite possibly the most balanced whisky I’ve ever had. The nose is a bit closed off at first, but given enough time it opens up to reveal a beautiful array of aromas. I could seriously nose this for hours without taking the first sip, and find something new every time I went back to it. The palate is luxurious but also packs a bit of a punch. A bit of everything here. After over 350 whiskies under my belt this has to be the best total package bottle to date. My only complaint, if you could really call it that, would be that the finish isn’t long enough. I’ve had some that you drink at 9pm and still taste after you wake up in the morning. This kind of dies abruptly from time to time just as things seem like they are going to continue on. Still, if I could only drink this for the rest of my life I don’t think I would mind at all. 4.75 and I highly recommended that if you see it, just buy it no questions asked. Cheers

Very salty and fruity and floral Amazing dram

2014 edition, bottled early July. This is in the new white boxes or as I like to the call them "should I just throw the box away?" edition. Nose - This reminds me at first of a really sweet red wine. Almost a wine with sugar in it. Then I start to pick out some of the salty notes from the peat. There's a bit of a baked good in here as well. Almost red wine, soy sauce and maybe a baked cookie. then there's a light gently toasted oak note at the end. Taste - Not very sweet up front. Soft and gentle. As it goes to the back of the tongue you get savory salts and then the whole things just goes bonkers with sherry and BBQ and oak tannin and there's even a bitterness here to go with the savory and the sweet and salty. Super complex. So I just did a 2010-2012 range bottle before this 2014. The older bottle was sweeter and had the better nose. The 2014 here however has more going on in the finish and brings in more intense extremes in the bitter, salty, heck there might even be a slight sour note. I think I like the 2014 more but I'm still going with a 3.75. I think longrow 18 in both cases is just missing something for me to push it into the higher scores. Sure 50% would get it there but there's more to it. There's just something missing here. I'll have to eventually get around to buying a few of the newer bottling, I think I had an 18 recently with some friends, but that was a dizzying day of drinking the best of the best.

I swear, it's getting hard to remember what I have and haven't reviewed from my bottles. I haven't reviewed a longrow 18 yet? Lets first review the old purple box version. I'm guessing this was 2010-2012 bottling range. No date to be found on this one. And for anyone interested I do have a bit of cork floating in the bottle and I had to replace the original cork (and I just broke the new cork so this bottle is on to its 3rd cork...screw caps people!). These are going for about 200 these days, but my store literally dropped the price from 240 to 200 the day after I bought this bottle, the last of the old boxes. Oh well Nose - I get sherry and grape bubble gum on the nose. Rich wine and citrus and hints of sea salt. As i explore I start to get BBQ over salty pork ribs. Taste - So this is a really hard whisky to explain, perhaps why i haven't reviewed it yet. It's sweet, it's light, it's subtle up front. If the Longrow Red's are in your face expressions of finishing and high abv the longrow 18 is a prim and proper dram, worthy of a statesman. There's peat, there's sherry, but it's all muted and refined up front. It then explodes on the finish where everything from vinegar, red wines, salted meats, sugar cookies, oak, and this classic longrow funk remain. It's almost too subtle and muted at first taste, but there's a sleeping giant behind it. This is a bit under whelming for me, and I plan to review a newer bottling next to compare. Still the complexity is there, the nose is one worthy of hours of time, and the flavors are great. 3.75 - I cannot give this one a 4, it's a bit too light up front for me, but it's one hell of a whisky.

This one really evolves after being open for a few weeks. It starts off spiky but really settles down as you work through the bottle. Very well balanced and not too smoky. Smoother than the regular peated with more treacle, less pepper but still a very long finish