Lagavulin White Horse

Often when people of a peaty persuasion are looking for a reliable single malt to enjoy or gift, I will direct them to Lagavulin 16 year. This islay whisky is known for its ‘house style’ of well balanced peat, rich, dry and entirely dependable.

Lagavulin will officially turn 200 next year… unofficially it actually is a wee bit illegally older harkening back to 1795. So what a treat to sample an earlier incarnation of the iconic Lagavulin 16 year!

The third from our remarkable evening featuring rare malts… we tasted blind discovering:

Colour – Burnished copper (clearly sherry cask!)
Nose – Honey, vanilla, a very ‘classic’ feel, spice, sweet basil, light plum, saunf (fennel), a bit of nougat peeping beneath, mild pinch of peat
Palate – Oily, rancid, rust, copper, iron.. in short quite metallic, dry, chilly pepper, then starts to sweeten, cinnamon, a bit of chocolate, smooth and increasingly sweet with each sip
Finish – Sits there, doesn’t do anything in particular except for a bit of pepper

Comments included “has the smell of an old library” and the “taste of rust.” Which may not sound terribly pleasant however when you experience it, has a compelling quality.

With the reveal, it was considered the “dark horse” of the evening as it displays the classic roots of our familiar friend – the modern avatar of Lagavulin 16 year – with some distinctly different notes.

This particular bottle is a collectors item – part of the initial 16 year old releases in the 1980s under the ‘White Horse’ label.

Interestingly, Lagavulin was indirectly responsible for our evening… it was the ‘amazing discovery’ of Lagavulin whisky that sparked the whisky explorations that became Malt Madness – read the story here.

It also, in turn, transformed a regular working man on a trip postponing his flight back to India, getting a car and driving straight to the distillery to morph into India’s Malt Maniac.

It even brought together members of our Mumbai private whisky tasting group who 1st met at the Lagavulin distillery… A fitting note indeed to close our rare malt transport back in time to the flavours and feel of whisky from the 1980s.

This remarkable malt came courtesy of India’s Malt Maniac Krishna Nakula at an evening organised by The Secret Supper Project and The Vault Fine Spirits in celebration of 20 years of Malt Madness.

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The 1980s was a time of pac-man, tetris, Apple computers, big chunky jewellery, hair that defied gravity, caked on make-up, and some very bad pop hits.

For some of us, the 1980s was also a time where we shouted “ban the bomb” and “anhilitate apartheid!”, where we stood firm with our brethren in Tiananmen Square, the Palestinian intifada, watched the wall come down and yes… had funky spiked hair, grunge clothes and hung out at punk rock gigs.

If you haven’t figured out which camp I belonged to… pop over to Everyday Asia and check out the photographic evidence in “How I got ‘hooked’ on going away.”

However, the 1980s didn’t happen to be a time that I could afford whisky! I was far too deeply buried into heavy academic tomes to surface to sniff, swirl, swish and swallow a single malt.

Rumour has it that the 1980s happened to produce many rather good drams. More than a few whisky experts around the globe speak of how whisky styles have changed between ‘then’ and ‘now’, noting that with the increased demand for single malt growing globally, production methods, quality controls and shifts in palates have created differences in whiskies produced 30+ years ago with those matured today.

After sampling the remarkable Glendronach grand dames and then the rare Karuizawa 39 year from 1973 with whisky stock laid in the early 1970s, we had another exceptional evening that sampled whiskies from the 1980s… There is indeed something ‘different’ about these drams!