As you will remember, last year it was the Friends of Laphroaig 10th Birthday. This month it is our turn. Your favourite distillery is now 190 years old!! In truth we are actually older than this but this marks the official date.
We could not let such a major event pass without doing something special for you so we searched out our finest barrel of 19 year old (19.0 years!). We are bottling it by hand straight from the cask at full natural strength right here at the distillery. We believe we will get approximately 170 bottles from this cask. We are only making this anniversary bottling available to our 'Friends of Laphroaig' (plus a little for our celebrations!). Rather than sell it on your online shop on a first come first served basis we felt that it would be fairer for all those who want one to submit their email address on a form provided on the 'Friends' website. We will then draw out 170 friends at random and inform them directly. Before you ask 'how good is it' we have tried it and think it is superb. However the nearest example that an expert has tasted was a 17 year old we bottled for the Islay festival 2 years ago. Dave Broom had this to say about that expression.
"Nose: Intriguing mix of smoke and cream. Coal tar soap, deck oil, dried seaweed, tar. Sugared almond and vanilla. Great balance.
Palate: A slow starter. Quite sweet then the peat ramps up into Germoline iodine. A silky feel.
Finish: Medicinal and dry.
Comment: A classic Laphroaig - much better than the 15 year old."
That 17 year old was sold for £150 a bottle to the general public. As this is our Birthday and it's only for you we felt that £90 would be a fairer price (lucky ones please don't auction your bottle on eBay for a profit!).
So if you would like to enter the birthday draw for a bottle just go to the front page of the FOL part of our website!
Finally a personal thanks to all of you who have been bidding for our 13 year old for charity. We have raised £1440 which is going to train our new guide dog for the blind 'Smokey'. We still have 7 more of these bottles up for auction too - one of them in the rounds of bidding right now.
Slainte,
John Campbell
