I had Loch Lomond 12 for the first time maybe seven years back, and I liked it. It was a decent 12-Year Peated scotch that I could get for about $35 and always thought of it, along with Speyburn 10, as the best kind of the under-$40 budget scotches you could find. Recently, I’ve seen a few of the people I follow here and have a great deal of respect for giving a low opinion of it, and I thought, uh-oh, maybe I was wrong. If I was wrong I was three bottles and about $80 down because when this went on clearance in my area, I picked up three bottles for $27 each. This was on a record day for me. This was post-pandemic (sort of) when my office opened back up for us to come and get our stuff to bring home for those of us who had opted to become permanent work-from-homers. My office was in downtown Philadelphia, and before I headed into the city, I mapped out all the stores that still had bottles of Lomond 12 left. In the end, I parked off South Street and did my office cleanout and shopping on foot and logged about 50,000 steps in one day according to my Garmin watch (still a record for me). Now, I didn’t crack any of those three bottles right away. In fact, it’s been almost two years they’ve been sitting in my cabinet, but I decided recently I was in the mood to taste it again. I feared the worst, feared that the reviews I’d read saying this wasn’t very good would turn out to be right, and well, different strokes for different folks, I guess. I’m not saying this is a whisky to rock your work and write home about because it’s blown your mind, but at $27 a bottle, this is certainly serviceable. The smoke is present on the nose along with a pleasant orchard fruit aroma making it a nice dram to drink next to a fire pit. I can see how there’s a certain underlying taste to the palate that’s slightly off in a sort of artificial sweetener type way like someone’s switched your sugar for stevia in your coffee (not sure how apt that is as a comparison because like many whisky drinkers, I have my coffee black), but it’s not so bad that (at $27) it would ruin the experience entirely and there’s still enough smoke, pear, and honey on the palate that I can willfully ignore it. Another thing I find particularly strange is that there’s a hint of sherry-finishing though it isn’t finished in sherry casks but three types of American oak bourbon barrels. It’s got a bit of chocolate in it too as it edges toward its medium-length finish, and I’d venture so far as to say that what it reminds me a lot of is a poor man’s version of the Benriach Smoky Twelve. That bottle is significantly better than this but it also costs almost three times as much as you might expect from a whisky of higher quality. Overall, I can concede to seeing how this wouldn’t be someone’s favorite, and if you’re paying anywhere above $40 for this, you’re going to find better whiskies and might want to opt for them, but I enjoy this and will certainly be finishing the two other bottles I scored on clearance at some point in the future, though I’m also in no rush to get to them. I’ve have the NAS Loch Lomond last year and again, at the price point, it wasn’t bad. I’m hearing good things about this year’s Open Lomond which is finished in Rioja barrels and given that that bottle is $50, I might take a chance if I can’t find anything else I’m looking to gamble on at that price point. Don’t think I’ve ever had something finished in Rioja.