Lp8 (Madeira Finish) Review [From Paris with Love]

Hi everyone,

Daves Whisky Reviews is 1 year old! Yay! It's the blog's anniversary today. Does that mean anything special? Not particularly. Business as usual: More reviews.

Do you remember that Cairdeas Laphhy from 2016 that was finished in Madeira casks? Well, if you were a fan of that (I haven’t tried it yet), you might be interested in this.

It’s a “Mystery malt” (huuuhhggggglaphhhuuuurooaighuuuuuhhg) Excuse me. A so called mystery malt from a very obvious Islay distillery. Distilled in 1998, it was then finished in Madeira casks.

Madeira is a funny fortified wine, in that to make it they essentially abuse the wine as much as possible, because they noticed that when the wine was stored on ships, it tasted better after a rough sea voyage round the world. Now, they heat it and slosh it about as much as they can in Madeira to try and replicate that.

Madeira isn’t hugely popular at the moment, but it’s seeing more use as whisky barrels recently as people become more experimental about finishings.

Lp⁸ 53.5%

Colour: Dark Gold

Body: Full

Nose: Medicinal and fruity, blood orange, a little peppermint, opens up with lovely coastal sea air and seaweed.

Taste: Soft, orange then intense smoke and mineral and coastal waves, gritty stones, seaweed, some sweetness, spicy ginger.

Finish: Long length. Sweeter, fruitier and more coastal, orange and salt. Best bit.

This is a lovely style of Laphroaig (Whoops) The Madeira hasn’t overwhelmed the style at all, and there’s some great minerality and coastal flavours in here too.

82/100

Thanks for reading!

Scotch Review #468

Whisky Network Review #535

Network Average: 74.3

Best Score: 92

Worst Score: 22

0-49 Terrible

50-59 Bad

60-64 Just About OK

65-69 Ok to Good

70-74 Good

75-79 Very Good

80-84 Excellent

85-89 Superb

90+ Magnificent

Full Disclosure Disclaimer: I currently work as a Brand Ambassador for Penderyn Distillery. The views expressed here are purely my own and do not reflect the views of Penderyn Distillery or The Welsh Whisky Company. I try to maintain as much objectivity as I can but feel free to take my reviews with as big a pinch of salt as you like. Furthermore, my rating scale is NOT based on a Parker type wine scoring scale or a school/college/university % or A-F grade score. You can find more on my scoring here. I apologise for any seemly low or 'bad' scores given with my system and am sorry I can't say only nice things. Please keep in mind that I am ethically compromised and am unable to produce 100% unbiased reviews.

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