As the 1L marker may indicate – this review is a little special. I was recently traveling through London (and apparently will return, so expect a new segment on London pubs to hit this site), and on the way home after some successful business I got myself some duty-free scotch. Of course with many options I couldn’t resist another entry from the Walker line.
This scotch was actually a recommendation to me by a friend as his favorite budget single malt. My current has been Deanston, and in truth I can understand his reasoning. The problem is that in terms of scotch I’m a highland and Islay kind of man, and while a Speyside or Lowland is always welcome – it’s just not what gets my blood pumping.
I chose this scotch because I tend to buy myself a nice scotch at the close of a project. I choose this because it’s distinctive shape and look appealed to me. My purveyor of spirits however told me that this used to sell like hotcakes because of it’s usage on Breaking Bad.
Now we are big fans of Auchentoshan, both their 12 year which Justice reviewed a while back, and their Three Wood. Here though we have the simpler offering. While it’s certainly not as great as it’s older siblings, it’s a more affordable price (and if you’re in NH with no goal to buy scotch it becomes affordable to the point where you can’t not buy it.)
So there I was, in a New Hampshire liquor store. I was stocking up on so many things (I love you Ezra Brooks), but sadly the store I was at was smaller, and had almost nothing for a scotch selection. Worse what was there were things I’d already had/reviewed. There was something that stood out, that I had not seen before.
That is a very pretty bottle…but it makes me wonder if its possible for a scotch to look a bit too Scottish.
Yes it’s more scotch. Come fight me if you have a problem with that. Anyway this week we discuss one of our more recent finds, and one that we love – because so far we’ve yet to find a 12 year (albeit blended) scotch for this price point that we can drink time and time again and still enjoy it.
In place of an article this week for one of my favorite scotches of all time, I have a video instead. Make no mistake I too enjoy Lagavulin as much as that man, and my brevity comes not from a lack of desire to write about the scotch, but that really nothing more needs to be said. This is in my top 10 of greatest things I have ever drunk in my life.
First I want to say this, when you name is capitalized like that – you automatically lose points on the honesty metric of our ‘objective’ scoring system. I wish that wasn’t the case, that a scotch can just be what it wants and doesn’t need to abide by your rules man – but then scotches shouldn’t be American punk bands calling us the man instead of just punching us in the face like a real scot would. You hear that scotch – I want you to hit me – as hard as you can.
I think at this point we’re running out of Taliskers to try. So while the original 10 year has been something that we like well enough, and gives us enough uniqueness to pick it up every once in a blue moon, this is sadly a different case. We picked up the 18 year for a recent convention, and while it’s a great scotch, we wanted so much more from an 18 year old scotch, and an 18 year old Talisker.
