Laphroaig Cairdeas Port Wood Edition

Not here in the USA yet. I would certainly go for a dram of it. That would be most interesting. However, I will hold off buying my very own bottle due to the fake coloring and chill filtration. Hopefully, some bars in my home town will buy a bottle or two to serve.

I thought I saw on 3whisky that this years allocation had already sold out but I may have misunderstood

@rigmorole, do you not buy any bottles of Laphroaig due to colorant and chill filtration?

Hey There Canuck Japanese Warrior:

Quarter cask, baby. All the way. No chill filtering and no fake coloring. I wish all the Laphroaigs were as much. They would be much better that way. I think the cask strength is also the "real deal" (no fake coloring). Not sure. It's definitely not chill filtered.

We can still enjoy and appreciate the full line of Laphroaigs without defending the practice of putting fake crap in it to change the color of some of them, such as the Cairdeas. Are we agreement there? It's great stuff that would be even greater without carmel sludge added to it.

I'm intrigued by taking this whole thing one step farther (or back, as it were): Blackadder is one bottler that just pours great casks into bottles without any filtration much at all. That's kind of radical, but it's supposed to be more like whisky used to be back in the 1800's. The particulates from the cask are supposed to add flavor.

That might be taking things a step too far, I'm not sure. I've never tasted Blackadder, but I'd like to. Thanks for your discussion on Cairdeas. I will keep my eyes peeled down at the Stillhouse. Hopefully, there will be a bottle soon down there.

I wish I could still buy the Laphroaig Cask Strength in Oregon. It's really good. I find it to be actually more mellow and less sharp than the quarter cask.

Of course, I do add some water, but not enough to take away some of that telltale "burn" we all enjoy.

Happy Saturday, CanadianNinja.

@CanadianNinja all laphroaig is not chill filtered. The 18 says NFC on the bottle.

Yes, but if I'm not mistaken, the 18 has caramel color/flavor added. That part's a bummer. I still do like drinking it, don't get me wrong! I would never thumb my nose at it! But for all that money, I probably won't be laying down my hard earned cash for a whisky with carmel junk in it. If somebody offered me a glass, I would gladly savor it!

I dislike the carmel junk much more than chill filtering, which can be okay, depending on the scotch. Carmel=never okay; chill filtering=sometimes okay, depending on what sort of scotch is involved. I can get depressed thinking about how whiskies as good as L18 could be even better without the caramel. . . .

@rigmorole The 2013 Cairdeas according to the email I received from Laphroaig is NCF, and ALL Natural Colour. The colour of this whisky comes from first fill port pipes, which as I understand are quite difficult to get hold of.

@rigmorole, my comment was more directed at the issue of colorant. I was under the impression that other than the Quarter Cask Laphroaig adds colouring to their whiskies. I have no idea if that is in fact true...

As for chill filtration, of course I am not a fan of it but I have a much bigger problem with adding E150 or whatever else. I just don't believe that distilleries should be doing it, we are definitely on the same page there. I hope that there is in fact nothing added to the Cairdeas!

I hate to potentially rain on your parade @rigmorole, the bottle of Quarter Cask I purchased in Togo at 48% abv says: "mit farbstoff, Farven Justeret Med Karamel" on the cardboard casing. Because of the strong historic/trade ties between Togo and Germany I am assuming that this bottle for the German market showed up in Lome. I believe that in Germany distillers are required to state when caramel has been added, one wonders why this is not the case in the US considering nothing can be added to Bourbon.

Say it ain't so! Tut, tut, looks like rain. Guess I won't be marching anywhere today.

Dear Laphroaig Distillers & Owners:

Plenty of we readers and critics at Whisky Connosr don't like or appreciate "caramel" loc na mhuice in your otherwise fine and delicious scotch.

There, I've said it. . . .

@rigmorole Here is a quotation from the email I received from Laphroaig:

"For the technically-minded among you: it’s been bottled at 51.3% ABV, is non-chill filtered and is an all natural colour."

So now we know for definite. This Port Wood Edition Cairdeas is 100% natural.

@rigmorole Absolutely....It's either the Cask Strength or Quarter Cask for me. As a FOL ( Friend of Laphroaig ) it does bug me a little bit the coloring jazz...but...as I stick to the QC mainly I'm at least satisfied that the dram I pour is "as the almighty intended".

@whiskyjj So to the original question....is the 2013 Cairdeas available anywhere ?

@MarceloL Sold out in the UK within hours. Whether some made it over to other countries and is yet to be released, perhaps ?

@whiskyjj Damn dirty apes! They've purchased it all to hell! Arrgh!

@MarceloL Lots of people feel like Charlton Heston on the Laphroaig website if you read the comments, lol.

@whiskyjj That's it ! I'm planning my next vacation to coincidence with the next release of Cairdeas so I can pick one up IN COUNTRY (I'd be flying over from the US), on day one. That, and a side trip to Orkney so I can visit the home of Highland Park.

@MarceloL I've lived in the UK all my life and never been to Scotland, let alone the whisky festival. Probably because the whisky is so readily available here, I've never felt the need to make the journey. I would like to visit a few distilleries in the future though myself.

Ok... so according to @NAV26, there is colouring in the Quarter Cask... wow, that's not nice to hear! It is however nice to hear that the German government respects it's citizens enough to implement laws which require distillers to state when they are using colorant. Wish I could say the same for other governments.

I am now very interested in knowing exactly which Laphroaig expressions use colorant and which do not.

let's be honest here...even if Laphroaig uses colorant, is it still not an exceptional dram? I'd say so!!

Of course Laphroaig whiskies are superb @lmann86. I consider Laphroaig whisky to be some of the best whisky out there. The issue I have is first, why add anything when it isn't necessary? And second, distilleries should respect their customers enough to fully and clearly disclose what they are putting into their whiskies.

I own the Laph18 at the moment, and there is indeed is E150 in here but I don't think its as much as in the 10 because of the much lighter colour. I happen to feel that chill-filtration is damaging a whisky much more than adding a little E150 to it. Chill filtration actually damages the finish by removing all the good bits. Compare Ardbeg 10 or Longrow CV with Laphroaig 10 and you'll know what I mean.
In the Laphroaig 18 I dont taste the caramel, It doesn't set me off in any way, but it would have been ruined if chillfiltered. But especially in the 18, I dont understand why they put E150 in it... The bottle is green and in a carton box, so in a shop you wouldnt be able to see what colour it is... so why bother?! Only reason I can imagine is consistency of colour... yearly batches have to look the same as previous bottlings so they add a little to make it similar. Any ideas?

That's just it @PeatyZealot. Why do they do it!? Consistency of colour may be a reason, but it certainly isn't a very good reason in my opinion. Especially when you consider that Laphroaig whiskies are really for serious whisky drinkers, in other words customers who know better than to be too concerned with colour. Adding colorant to whiskies like Johnnie Walker, Chivas etc, whiskies which are meant for the mass market, can almost be understood. But adding E150 to whiskies that are more often than not purchased by people who have a greater knowledge of whisky... I don't get it!

@lmann86 I got a bottle in the US with the help of Laphroaig USA Facebook page - just ask around you rarea...

I think that this particular Cairdeas is a bit more popular than previous ones, probably because the port finish makes it so unique. I would love to try a pink, winey Laphroaig. If they took a tip from Ardbeg and bottled more of it, they would probably clean up. Then again, I don't want to start seeing Laphroaig with Ardbeg prices. (The closest store that has the port Cairdeas is seeling it for 85$, which seems fair. It's 167 miles from me, which is not so fair.)

@Rigmorole: Blackadder Raw Cask is tasty stuff. I'm pretty sure that that the Islay version is Laphroaig, so it might be interesting to do a head to head with the CS.

Regarding the about conversation about E150 and chil filterng, I was reminded of the some links that have been posted before in other threads (pasted below). Both had surprising results. In the experiment conducted on chill filtration, only the "novice" had better than a success rate above 33% ("far worse than random") when picking a non chill-filtered whisky from a filtered one.

maltmaniacs.net/2013/03/…

maltmaniacs.net/E-pistles/…

@NAV26 Hey I was gonna say that :p Even the 18 has some in it, albeit very little since its quite light in colour

@CanadianNinja They do it, even if its in a green bottle... confuses me a lot haha. There are lots of independent Laphroaig bottlings at cask strength and without the E150 Rigo should be taking a look in those ;)

@PeatyZealot D'oh! I see already commented on this one :p