Scapa 16 Year Old

I have a bottle of this I bought especially for moving into my first home. That long awaited day is Wednesday !!!!! So expect a review Thursday evening! Great review @rigmorole. I had my first dram of this during a whisky tasting in Cambridge and fell in love with it instantly. Possibly due to the fact that like you point out, it's NOT YOUR TYPICAL WHISKY! I agree though, it doesn't pack enough punch to be truly memorable.

Absolutely agree, @conorrob and @rigmorole - this is a very under-rated but quality whisky; the power is in the spirit itself rather than from the barrel, and it is nice to see a simple, well done, ex-bourbon cask whisky where the character of the whisky isn't over-powered by a cask finish, etc. I'm down to the last 200ml of my bottle, so I should get around to doing my own review soon.

Is it a little like Edradour? That one seems to be a crowdsplitter as well

I like the Scapa 16 yr; reminds me of the Balvenie 15 yr Single Barrel.

With that said - for roughly the same amount of money - I'd rather have it's Orkney neighbour the Highland Park 15 yr.

I am a fan of Ledaig 10 and would love to try more whiskies from the Islands. Scapa is my next try on my journey, that or the Jura Prophecy, and to finish the trip I will be getting a bottle of Highland Park 18.

I like Scapa 16 - quite safe and drinkable! Certainly an 80 something - I would go 84 at present though I don't have all my numbers worked out - AND we all have a different numbering system even with the same numbers.

How about agreeing on a number for "Undrinkable" (Bruichladdich Rocks comes to mind!!).

I have only had one undrinkable malt so far and it was a bottle of Bowmore Legend. For the price i could go with Buchanan's 12 DeLuxe, I rate whiskies in the 90's often because i only buy stuff that has a briny quality all the way through.

The peculiar taste of scapa might stem from the lobotomized lomond wash still. An interesting distillery that manages to stay below the radar

What do you mean by "lobotomized?" That's interesting

To me, Scapa mixed characteristics of a young scotch (malty cereal quality) without the harshness. It feels in the mouth like an older scotch but there are qualities of youth mixed in. I'm not saying there is some below-16 scotch mixed in, merely that the taste reminds me of some of the qualities of a young scotch. I bought an indie bottling (Signatory) of an Edradour at it had the similar barley-rich note that seemed "unfinished" in a way. I didn't care for that bottling of Edradour. It's not as good as the Scapa 16. IT had a vegetative note that just wasn't appetizing to me. Almost like yellow beets and celery mixed with brown sugar.

Normally a Lomond still had three adjustable rectifier plates that could be adjusted to create different styles of whisky, making it the lovechild of a pot and a Coffey still. The Lomond still of Scapa however had these plates removed somewhere in the 80's, so it is in fact no longer a real Lomond still, but a pot still with an unconventional shape. The only distilleries that still use the Lomond still as it should be used are the Loch Lomond distillery and Bruichladdich (from the old Interleven distillery and I guess they didn't modify it), but the latter use it only for their gin production.