Lagavulin 12 Year Old bottled 2012 12th Release

Our whisky club had been enjoying some beautiful whiskies at our second meeting at Helvetica. This tasting unlike our last one, was not about sweet, fruity, or floral. We were talking about big bold flavors, big bold whiskies.

My friends had started with Ardbeg Galileo and Talisker 10 Year Old, another one grabbing Aberlour Abunadh, my brother in law grabbing a Longrow, myself I'd jumped straight into Campbeltown moving into Islands and now it was time for me to move into Islay.

The reason why was because I discovered that Helvetica had a very sexy little whisky that runs hundreds of dollars, an annual release from Diego.

Lagavulin 12 year old.

What's this you say?! Lagavulin 12 year old doesn't run hundreds of dollars? You're right it doesn't!

However when I saw that they had it, it was going for $25 a dram my brain shut down and immediately started thinking Lagavulin 21 year old.

I immediately blow a gasket in excitement and know EXACTLY what my next dram is going to be.

I grab a dram of it and sit down, giggling in pleasure.

An Islay distillery I enjoy, cask strength, limited release?!

Sign me up!!

I immediately give it a nose and I smile.

Sweet peat smoke immediately hits me, which makes me look up at my brother in law and ask him if he remembers the days when a big Islay whisky's smoke was rough and harsh instead of soft and sweet as it is these days.

He agrees.

Sweet peat smoke, coal smoke, almost charcoal at times, brine, lots of brine and salt with at times lemon and some other citrus fruits, then a small amount of cocoa and spicy tobacco.

God that's nice!

Definitely worthy of a bottle that runs at several hundred dollars (mind you at this point I haven't realized that this whisky is much cheaper)

Time for a drink!

Again the peat immediately makes itself known along with some sexy smoke, vanilla, tar that reminds me of cigarettes, the cocoa makes an appearance again along with the lemon and more citrus fruits, salt, wow, just wow.

Loving it!

God this is an awesome whisky! It bloody well sucks that this is such an expensive whisky because I'd love a bottle of this.

A long drying smoky, sooty finish full of charcoal and peat ends this bloody sexy whisky. Wow. Once more wow.

I'm so lucky that they had such a hard to get whisky for sell, even at $25 a dram.

Then a couple days after this meeting I'm looking online for this bad boy, trying to see how much it will set me back and I'm oh so pleasantly surprised.

It would odds are run around $120 AUS which for this is a STEAL! I can't believe it! However I do feel a little stupid about how excited I got when I saw it and kept commenting on the price I THOUGHT it was running, makes me feel like a bit of an idiot, however I'm so happy that I got a chance to try it.

Would I pay $25 a dram for it again? I doubt it. A whisky has to be rare, stupidly so for me to pay more then $20 a dram, but if you ever get a chance to try it, do so!!!

Find where to buy Lagavulin whisky