I have had two bottles of this on my shelf over the last several years and drank many more drams out and about, so this entry is long overdue. N: Light, sweet, and eminently floral. This is unquestionably malt driven. Barley and granulated brown sugar with wisps of honey, buttery and oily macadamia, and floral orange. Looking for more perhaps isn’t worth it, whilst some menthol emerges so does a little grittiness verging on mustiness, but then again maybe it is as there is a growing presence of apricot and apple and a whisper of the sea. P: Gripping creaminess with a salivating hint of saltiness on the edges. Barely sugar and buttery crumbly biscuits warm from the oven are the unsurprising stars of the show with a supporting cast of crisp apple, grapes, and a tannic spice element. The more I roll this over the more I am convincing myself that there is a fresh summery red fruit thread running through this perhaps some influence from a red wine or sherry cask? F: Medium-long. This is a whisky that wants to stay with you, for a perhaps limited malt driven profile there is a transition from slightly tannic cereals to a mineralic and oh so very feint strawberry. (1) This was definitely overdue. (2) This is not what I remember drinking so many times before. (3) This whisky should be a classic. Classic Laddie is a very pure expression of excellent craftsmanship with nothing to hide behind. No gaudy caskings, no walls of smoke, no bombing from heavy handed port or sherry. This is, to me at least, a true expression of what good whisky is and the starting point where good whisky can be appreciated and understood. Here is a whisky you could share with a new convert or a seasoned veteran, mixed into a cocktail, added to a flight, or sunk into on its own. This is simply put: just excellent. Distiller whisky taste #269 [Pictured here with a chunk of Carnmenellis Granite from the Cornubian Batholith of peninsula southwest England. Around 300-275 million years ago at the end of a mountain building episode called the Variscan Orogeny there was local stretching of the crust around what is now SW England. Extension of this crust allowed huge volumes of granitic magma to ascend into the upper crust emplacing as five seperate plutons many kilometres in size.] Bruichladdich running scores Classic Laddie: 4/5 Black Art 10.1 29 y/o: 5/5 Port Charlotte 10: 4.5/5 Port Charlotte CC:01: 5/5