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Loch Lomond 18 Year 50ml

Loch Lomond 18 Year 50ml

$9.99

Mini/50ml Bottle

Bottled at 46%, the Loch Lomond 18 Year was matured in ex-Bourbon Barrels. 90pts Whisky Advocate. Evan is also a big fan of it.

 

50ml ml

OUT OF STOCK
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Region:Scotland > Highland
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Evan's Tasting Note

Nose: Oily and phenolic in style. Orange Marmalade spread on burnt toast, beer nuts, sesame brittle, maple and brown sugar roasted bacon, crème brûlée, banana split, red rose tea, polished leather and bee's wax.

Palate: Smokey and tangy with an underlying oiliness. Amaro-like it its bitter and sweet notes - this really coats the tongue nicely. Fuzzy peaches and sour orange sliced candy. candied ginger, chai tea latte with honey, apple cider, Christmas cake.

Finish: Rich, oily and tingly on the fade with a touch of salt and fruit. The Amaro-like bitter-sweetness sticks around.

Comment: Wow. I was not expecting this. For me, this is an incredible whisky. The combination of bitter, sweet and smoke is a wonder. If it wasn't for the juicy and sweet notes, the bitter oak notes would be way over top. If it wasn't for that would, this would be flabby fruit and not enough smoke. All the parts of this work together in a wonderful and unique way.

Andrew's Tasting Note

Nose: savoury and meaty; seared pork belly, apple sauce, lemon drops and wax paper; white chocolate Hershey's Kisses, chunk malty and Billy Bee honey (the one in the bear shaped bottle); subtle smoke.

Palate: soft and still savoury; more BBQ pork belly, white chocolate and waxy tones; a touch of young Calvados, building oak spices and earthy leather; hickory smoke. 

Finish: long, coating and meaty; the leathery notes, smoke and oak spices linger longest.

Comment: feel like I need a little more hoisin sauce for my BBQ pork buns.

Producer's Tasting Note

Nose: Green apple and grapefruit aromas fuse before the sweet character of honeysuckle and mature oak comes through.

Taste: Full bodied and rounded. Elegant wood notes of toasted oak and cigar box become green fruits with apple and gooseberry.

Finish: Long finish with dried tea and tobacco leaf in balance with soft medicinal peatiness and wood smoke.

90pts Whisky Advocate

"The 18 year old is Loch Lomond’s flagship single malt and marks the improvement in quality from this distillery during recent years. The nose offers peaches and vanilla, mild spice, pipe tobacco, and a hint of sweet wood smoke. Nicely textured, with bold, sweet, citrus fruit flavors, vanilla, almonds, and cocoa. Nutty, gently spicy, with cocoa and a hint of coffee in the lengthy, subtly peated finish."

Originally written by Evan in blog posts for our 2019 and 2020 KWM Whisky Calendars.

Founded in 1965, Loch Lomond is a bizarre operation that is capable of making multiple different styles of spirit all under one roof. It is capable of producing Single Malt, Single Grain, and Blended Whisky entirely at one site. It can and does do this, and it also makes Single Malt in and a wide variety of styles, including both peated and unpeated types.

There are a total of thirteen stills within the Loch Lomond Distillery, however, they are definitely not all the same. Included in this number are your typical swan-neck style pot stills: the type you see at most Scottish distilleries that make single malt whisky. Beyond that though, things get weird. There are also three pairs of straight-neck pot stills, which are sometimes called Lomond stills. One of these pairs has a water cooling system installed on the top of the still that the heated vapour hits before going through the narrowing neck/pipe for collection. This results in much more reflux and leads to a lighter, softer, fruitier spirit being produced.

Last but not least, there is a six-story Coffey/column still that is actually split in two to accommodate the three-story building it resides in. This still is used to distill malted barley, but due to SWA regulations it still must be called Single Grain spirit in style

With this unusual combination, Loch Lomond Distillery is capable of producing its own blended whisky entirely on-site, without having to source whisky from other distilleries. It is one of the very few (possibly only) active distilleries to be able to do this.

In all, Loch Lomond makes ELEVEN different styles of spirit on a regular basis. For official bottlings, it currently focuses on three styles for regular releases. We are going to taste one of them today.  Another point worth mentioning that goes along with this: Loch Lomond also uses a total of three different types of yeast in fermenting the malt. The yeast used is selected based on the style they are looking to create. They of course use a Distiller’s Yeast, which does have different strains but is typically meant to be high yield when it comes to converting sugars to alcohol in the mash. The other two yeasts used are actually meant for wine fermentation though, including one typically used for Chardonnay grapes. The bottom line for all of this is that no matter how strange you think Loch Lomond might be, they have found even more ways to be confounding that we probably don’t even know about yet.

Sourced from the Loch Lomond Distillery website

Above: A picture cribbed from Loch Lomond Distillery's website showing a distiller peering into the spirit safe and trying to remember exactly which style of whisky they were producing that day.

The Inchmurrin style made by the distillery is named after the largest island within the Loch itself. At 120 hectares in size, it is the largest freshwater island in the British Isles. The Isle of Inchmurrin – or Mirin’s Island – is named after St Mirin. A monastery built on the island in the seventh century held a chapel dedicated to the Saint, though only ruins now remain.

Inchmurrin bottlings are typically created from whisky produced using straight-necked Lomond stills. They are typified by light and fruit-forward style in comparison to the fuller-bodied, spicy and lightly peated Loch Lomond and heavily peated Inchmoan releases. 

The Inchmurrin style is named after the largest island within the Loch itself. At 120 hectares in size, it is the largest freshwater island in the British Isles. The Isle of Inchmurrin – or Mirin’s Island – is named after St Mirin. A monastery built on the island in the seventh century held a chapel dedicated to the Saint, though only ruins now remain.

The name Inchmoan comes from an Island in the freshwater Loch Lomond. It is low-lying and contains marsh areas, woods and grassland. It was once a source of peat fuel for the nearby village of Luss. It is currently privately owned but parts of the small island are used by campers and as a picnic area.

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