It’s a fantastically deep and rich flavor that’s a bit like eating a s’more, campfire and all. A mild peat and citrus bring up the rear along with some notes of cocoa, fruit and honey.
That campfire smokiness comes tearing across the palate like a bat out of hell with vanilla, butterscotch, malt, Novocain and graham in the sidecar. A wonderfully complex nose with layer after layer of enticing aromas. These big heavy oily notes get cut with hints of citrus, light fruit, malt, honey and a slightly vegetal underpinning. Warm peat comes out first followed by some nice salty briny notes and accompanied with some caramel, iodine, smoke and char. Basically the royal stamp of approval because they make tasty whisky. They received this honor after the prince visited his favorite distillery in 1994 and they’ve included it on their packaging ever since. A Royal Warrant means that they supply a good or service to a royal court or a certain royal personage and has no significance beyond lending prestige and quality, via-association, to the brand. In addition to being almost 200 years old (I’m expecting big things from them next year) It’s also the only whisky to carry the Royal Warrant of the Prince of Wales. Though through all of this one thing has remained the same and that is quality. Beam has owned Laphroaig since 2005 when it was called Fortune Brands. This lead to it brand changing hands several times over the years and is Currently owned by Suntory, who now owns Beam. The distillery got it’s start in 1815 by Donald and Alexander Johnston and was run by the family till 1954 (139 years) when the last member of the family died without an heir. A deeper, richer, more complex version of the regular Laphroaig 10, but at 1 1/2 times the price it’s something I won’t be buying regularly, but definitely will be keeping a bottle around as an occasional companion to it’s daily drinkable sibling.When the flagship product tastes this good, you know you’re dealing with a quality brand. Adding a splash of water definitely kicks it up a notch, taking the whisky to another level with the smoke and peat vitally exploding from the glass and the sweet notes moving up several notches to keep in step. I enjoy this whisky and the way it’s myriad facets play off each other with savory, sweet, smoky and salty all working in tandem to create a very tasty dram. Smoky char partners up with some emerging dark fruit, orchard fruit, salt, wood, vanilla and mint to create a wonderfully long slow finish.
#LAPHROAIG 10 FULL#
Perfectly balanced with a thick full body, a rich oily feel and only a slight bite even at it’s full 114.4 proof. It’s an amazing cavalcade of flavor that delivers sip after sip. PEAT comes marching through, leading a procession of vanilla, citrus, smoked meat, brine, smoky char, pear heavy orchard fruit, malt, honey, wood and baking spices. This alone is creating a fantastic aroma, but add in the hints of briny seaweed that float across the bottom and it becomes a fantastically multi-faceted sniffing experience. Peat and pear heavy orchard fruit follow in it’s wake and bring some malt, vanilla, orange rind and antiseptic along with them. Smoke comes first and it reminds me of a BBQ with it’s initial mesquite like quality.
NCF + CS = You’re getting a lot more whisky for that $23 leap. So what does all that actually mean? Well its’s a pretty simple equation really. To know what that other filter option is we just need to look at the story behind the Quarter Cask which says “Finally it was decided to totally eliminate the process of ‘chill filtering’ as it had not been invented in the time of the Johnston Brothers”. Laphroaig doesn’t expressly state that it’s NCF, but they do say that “Original Cask Strength Laphroaig is barrier-filtered only just, to remove the small char particles present” which denotes that other filtering options could be in play. In addition to being cask strength it also seems to be non-chill filtered. They still take a bunch of barrels and blend them together to create each batch (like Wild Turkey Rare Breed), they just don’t add any water to cut it down to the 43% ABV of the regular Laphroaig 10. Clocking in at a whopping 114.4 proof this bruiser of whisky is as close as you can get to tasting it straight from the barrel in the comfort of your own home. The no-water-added cask strength brother of the mighty Lap 10 is this, the Laphroaig 10 Cask Strength.
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