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The English translation should be soon online. Click here for the Google automatic translation
The Laphroaig 40 yo
Written by Claudio on 11/10/2009The best barley of Islay, malted in the distillery’s buildings with local peat, fermented and distilled in Bessie Williamson époque. Then, matured in warehouse n. 1 for a little more than 40 years. It is a bottle that contains an important part of the life of Laphroaig.
On Laphroaig’s website you can read:
"After the 1959 harvest, Bessie bought from a local farmer what she thought was a particularly good batch of barley of a variety called “Golden Promise”. This was processed through our own maltings and used to produce a fine whisky, as unique as the Island itself.
In those days, the majority of whisky was matured in old sherry or wine casks, and many of these were rebuilt as hogsheads and it is from casks of this type that this 40 year old whisky was matured in. They would have been made from European oak, probably a variety called “Quercus Robur”. On the 14th March 1960, a number of these hogsheads were filled and placed to mature in No 1 warehouse"
It has to be added that casks didn’t belong to Laphroaig. An American, Abe Rosenberg, who made his fortune as J&B importer, started during post war time to buy and collect Scotch Whisky’s casks that belonged from different distilleries. So came to life a company named Duncan Taylor (DTC). Among those casks there were naturally also some Laphroaig’s ones. Rosenberg died in 1994, but DTC still exist today and it is property of two Scots (Euan Shand and Alan Gordon) and it is settled in Huntly, Speyside. The distillery of Laphroaig bought back some old casks from DTC and from that ones obtained the 40 years.
It is always surprising to discover how distilleries have never had big stocks of old casks. Just few cases are the exception, distillery Glenfarclas comes to my mind – one of the few distilleries that belonged to a Scottish family – which released the series Glenfarclas Family Cask with vintage from 1952 to 1994. For the other cases we can just hope that some independent bottler or collector still has old vintage.
The Laphroaig 40 years was bottled at 42.4% ABV, and it is the oldest Laphroaig officially released by the distillery.
It was distilled in 1960, bottled in 2000 – at the beginning of the new millennium - and put up for sale in 2001.
The bottles produced, slightly less than 4000, were sold in an elegant wooden box covered in leather and with a retail price of £ 1,000 including VAT.
Among those 4000 bottles, 300 circa were distributed in the United Kingdom through Oddbins with the Vintage 1960 on the label. The remaining 3700 were distributed in the rest of the world with 40 years written on the label.
Laphroaig 40yo (42.4%, OB)
Ti sfidiamo!
La parola Laphroaig è ripetuta in questo sito per alcune centinaia di volte.
Trova un punto in cui è scritta in modo errato, segnalacelo, e riceverai una mignon di Laphroaig 10yo in omaggio!
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