Is it just me, or could a whisky taste any more like a beach ball? At first, I would say that I don’t mean that literally. Yet, somehow I do. There’s a rubber quality here that I associate with peated whisky, and Islay is known for their peated whiskies, and yet, the Classic Laddie isn’t peated. So where does the slight edge of rubber emanate from? Don’t get me wrong. The rubber isn’t overwhelming. It’s very subtle and may be all in my head. But actually, isn’t everything, perception-wise, in my head? Yeah, I’m going there. There’s something of a refreshing saline scent in the whisky as well that carries on into the palate. I’m a little suspicious of that blue bottle. That baby blue bottle. It’s baby blue like an azure sky with white lettering that reminds you of the clouds in that azure sky and it makes you think, I should drink this shit on the beach! The maltiness in this is beautiful. You can taste the grain in a way that both makes you think the whisky has a youth but it’s also well-blended. It’s like amber wheat and vanilla mixed. It’s bready. It’s like bread dipped in honey. This is a whisky that makes me want to go fly a kite in the sand. It’s a whisky that makes me want to sit around that campfire on Amity beach, you know that one at the very beginning of Jaws where those late-70s hippy kids who’ve missed the best part of the peace love movement are sitting around a fire trying to get laid and they’re pairing up and making eye contact and drinking bad beer right before the one runs off to get eaten? This is what they should have been drinking. This maybe would have made the beautiful blonde stay by the campfire sipping something good instead of cheap beer, avoiding the whole run in with a shark. This is never going to be the best scotch you ever taste, but I guarantee you it’s going to please every scotch fan you give it to. I think this is the baseline Laddie, which means, the only place you have to go from here is up, and as a baseline, it generally means the sky is the limit. That beautiful sky, azure and blue. Lord, they killed it in the marketing on this one. The bottle looks like you would expect the whisky to taste. PS. Please note, this review has been written under the influence.