cascode
Loch Lomond 18 Year
Single Malt — Highlands , Scotland
Reviewed
May 1, 2022 (edited May 4, 2022)
Nose: Yeasty bread, uncooked oatmeal. It’s dry and feinty rather than sweet. Apple skins, lemon zest, ginger, cut grass and sawdust. I don’t detect any peat smoke at all, maybe just a hint of barrel char. It’s a rather nervous nose but curiously flat at the same time, at least when neat. Maybe a dash of water helps it? Oh yes, that’s better. The nose relaxes with a teaspoon of water.
Palate: Spicy, hot malt with beer-like fermentation notes in the arrival. A sour development follows with astringent orange peel and rolled-oats the dominant flavours. The texture is OK but watery. A teaspoon of water improves the palate, adding balance (and texture, curiously) and smoothing off most of the prominent youthful roughness. A thread of wood smoke comes out in the palate and the heat is mercifully subdued.
Finish: Medium/short. Sour, hot and slightly bitter cereals fading out to a sour tannic note that borders on metallic with wet cardboard overtones. With dilution it becomes more acceptable and the harsh notes are tamed, but the aftertaste is the same.
Age is not a guaranteed indication of quality. Here is the proof.
The nose on this is unusually bright and sharp for an 18 year old single malt and there is a significant lack of positive cask involvement. It does not suggest either maturity or complexity. The palate is similarly young in profile and does not offer a great deal. If you gave me this in a blind tasting and said it was 5 years old I’d believe you.
Water improves this malt significantly. Drink it neat at your peril. I can see how this profile would appeal to some but it’s way outside my comfort zone. Add to that the fact that this costs an outrageous AUD$130 in Australia right now and I would certainly not recommend it. To me anyway, it is less impressive than the 12 year old, which in turn was less enticing then the much cheaper Original (malt) and Reserve (blended) offerings from Loch Lomond.
Over here, for $130 you can buy Argbeg Uigeadail, Port Charlotte 10, Laphroaig Triple Wood, or Kilchoman Sanaig so why on earth would you buy this poor sad thing?
“Adequate, just barely, but definitely not recommended” : 70/100 (2 stars)
130.0
AUD
per
Bottle
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@PBMichiganWolverine Cheers, got it.
@cascode great—- just wrote you
@PBMichiganWolverine If you want to pass on my "public" email it is [email protected]
@PBMichiganWolverine I'm intrigued - I'll follow up with you later.
@cascode if you’re looking to write, malt-review were looking for writers. I know the editor, and can refer you if you’re interested
Thank you, sirs – you are too kind. @PBMichiganWolverine The only thing I claim with any certainty is that I know enough about whisky to realise just how little I know. However I have toyed with the idea of moving to Scotland for a couple of years when I retire to make a documentary series following the trail of Alfred Barnard’s travels through the UK in the late 19th century. We’ll see 😉 @Anthology I think most distilleries are honest. There is the occasional con artist as you get in any industry, but casks are rigorously tracked by customs and excise so it’s pretty difficult to defraud, at least with regard to the age of a whole batch. Dud malts, I think, are mostly due to bad cask management, warehousing, production or simply a blend recipe that was miscalculated. There is also the not infrequent occurrence where casks have been left for too long and start to deteriorate, or the distillate has dropped below 40% abv. For financial reasons the casks have to be used so they are rescued by blending them with other casks of the same or greater age that have high enough proof so the batch comes up to minimum strength, regardless of whether it is any good or not. Inferior vattings like this are sometimes offloaded wholesale to supermarkets for sale under generic names, but occasionally if it is borderline the distillery will go ahead and release it themselves for a higher price.
@Anthology I don’t know—- I would think they would be. If caught, it can be a PR nightmare, and a loss to reputation
Ditto with Wolve’s comments on your whiskey knowledge @cascode . I promise I’m not trying to create a controversy but I’ve occasionally wondered whether distilleries are always honest and forthcoming about their age statements. I’ve experienced it myself where a juice’s tasting experience doesn’t align with the stated age (as in, tastes way younger than stated). I’ve read a ton of reviews where other trusted reviewers have observed similar phenomenon. This review might just have put me over the edge. Either that or they’ve used “negative” casks that take away from the spirit rather than contribute to it. Yeah, I know. Just made that up (using the positive, neutral and positive aka active) cask analogy. Just trying to find a scintilla of benefit of doubt to keep believing that all age statements are created equal. SMH.
@cascode I am forever impressed by your range of knowledge. You seriously need to write a book or open up your own whiskey blog.
@PBMichiganWolverine It's kind of like Springbank with Longrow and Hazelburn. Loch Lomond is very (very!) lightly peated, Inchmurrin is fruity and unpeated and Inchmoan is fruity but heavily peated. The distillery runs 11 stills of 4 different types and different washes are distilled on them so altogether LL produces 17 types of spirit, ranging from light, unpeated grain whisky through to heavily peated pot-still single malt. The distillates are aged separately and combined in different ways to make not just various expressions under the Loch Lomond name, but also Inchmurrin, Inchmoan, Inchfad, Croftengea, Old Rhosdhu and Craiglodge. My opinion is that their cheapest stuff is the best, as the distillery character is rather "industrial", sharp and hot and the more you age it, the more it seems to intensify as it absorbs cask tannin. Interestingly, I've had several independent bottles of Loch Lomond and they don't show this characteristic.
This distillery is a bit confusing. Don’t they also make Inchmurrin and Inchmoan? Is it just peaty and non-peaty versions?