Ledaig 16 Old Particular Douglas Laing

Thanks to /u/muaddib99 for sharing this sample.

We had a meeting. One of us hadn’t had Ledaig before. Once done all the important parts of the meeting, two people at the meeting broke out the whiskies. We reminded each other it’s pronounced Le-Check over and over as we drank more cask strength (and some not cask strength) whisky. There may have been giggling.

So we know about Ledaig now: It’s made by Tobermory, as their heavily peated malt.

But what about the other part of Ledaig 16 Old Particular Douglas Laing? Well Old Particular pops up every so often. This is the unique series of hand-selected Scotch. They follow some standards too. Anything aged 18 years or younger are bottled at 48.4%. Anything over that age? It’s either bottled at 51.5% or at cask strength, depending. Typically it’s the latter.

There are some times where I’ve agreed with the strength, and others where I’ve felt that it hasn’t lived up to what it should be. So I’ll be frank: Going into OP bottlings, I’m usually a bit reserved.

Let’s see if this changes my mind, shall we?

Price: N/A at the LCBO

Region: Island

Distillation Date: March 1997

Bottling Date: September 2013

Cask Number 10034

Abv: 48.4%

Colour: 5Y 8/8

Nose: Matchsticks, mineral, plum, wood fire, raisin, strawberry

So I’m assuming a sherry cask here. Lots of sulfur, red fruit type of thing going on. Takes over a lot of the dram save for some of the peat, which fights it’s way up.

Do I think a higher strength would help this? Probably not. I’m not finding anything lost here by the low strength, more by the sherry being a bully.

Taste: Strawberry, anise, caramel, peanut, watery

Yeah, the sherry has buffaloed it’s way into this dram. The caramel and anise is nice and actually reminds me of a whisky, and specifically some aspects of the /r/scotch bottling that tasted nice.

It has a watery element to it. The mouth feel is bringing it down a step or two.

Finish: Bacon, brown sugar, peanut, umami/beef broth, brine, milk chocolate

Nice finish. Actually I have to say, after everything else, this was going to be an easy pass, however the complexity, bacon, and overall nice meatiness and Ledaig profile on the finish makes up for all of that.

Conclusion: You drink this for the finish. It’s that simple. The nose smells like it’s been over sherried. The taste may have been interesting at some point, however the lower abv. has hurt that.

Finally you have the finish, which does an interesting Thai food like flavour combo mixed with some real complex chocolate and salty notes. It shouldn’t work, but does. So in the end, you drink this for the finish.

77/100

Scotch review #687, Island review #88, Whisky Network review #1148