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Definitely the best 12YO Lagavulin I've tasted so far. At one moment I suddenly caught the beautiful aroma of a cheese-plate, huh.

Too much charred oak.

87.50 More raw, sharper, peatier, and bitter, with more chili spice, pepper, and dry, tart wood. The cannon features pleasantly sweet, exotic fruits, melon, and pineapple. The flavor is much sharper, with more heavy wood and tart fruit. The apricot peel is noticeable.

mediocre and with this I found out that I really like laga with at least some sherry influence

What's so nice in this one (just like in some older batches) is that even though it's heavily peated, there are plenty subtle notes which manage to come through. Less cookie than the 17th.

Dunyvaig The 12 year old Lagavulin is the mainstay in the Diageo Special Releases and I have had the good fortune of trying quite a few. This is the Laga 12 from 2018, just before the Rare By Nature theme was introduced, meaning this is still the ‘classic’ packaging. So far all of these have been very good, so I’m fairly certain this is going to be another lovely tasting session. Slices of lime, roofing, diesel fumes and sweet smoke… that’s the nose in a nutshell. When I put my nose in the glass again some maritime notes appear: seaweeds, salt, the scent of the bay in which the distillery can be found. I’m taken back to the remains of Dunyvaig Castle (which is currently being excavated with the support of Lagavulin, by the way). The arrival is sturdy with that typical peat smoke, lots of citrus fruit, a hint of vanilla and apples, pepper like there is no tomorrow and lots of ashes giving it a drying effect. This is a wonderfully smoky peat monster with a salty twist. Lovely! The finish is dry on ashes, liquorice, pepper and smoke and it lasts forever. Yup, I knew this going in. Top dram, as usual. The only difference… this is the best I’ve had so far.

For me it is the best CS with value for money.

Did this one H2H with the 2014 variant, this 2018 stronger in alcohol in the nose, and fruitier. Also fruitier in taste, just a little lighter and smooth and attractive. Both are great whisky’s by the way.

https://kaypingers-whiskyblog.de/frontend/fullarticle.php?id=359 Colour: Pale gold Nose: Thin aroma structure with maritime lemon, delicate peaty smoke and little spice. Again, the nose seems somehow watered down. Metallic notes appear that combine with herbs, algae and seaweed. The flavor yield is also rather modest. Taste: Hot and salty, marinated with lemon, grapefruit, spicy pepper, chili, sweet peat, honey, vanilla and underlaid cold smoke. On the one hand a bit woody-bitter, but on the other hand always sweet towards the finish. Finish: Long - bitter-sweet and with fresh herbs. Wood, some licorice and a "put on" artificial sweetness. Comment: Again, not the hoped! 85 points N: 82P / G: 87P / F: 85P

Powerful, balanced and very typical Lagavulin - very good!

Great whisky. I liked that very much

COLOR: white wine / straw (without dye) - a very good crashing Islay with a lot of impact, power, volume and smoke - is in comparison (according to my evaluation) however 1 Point behind the bottling of 2016 and 2019 => not quite as balanced and harmonious - with originally times 85 -90€ already a house number, but still okay for the quality... currently at approx. 130€ you have to think twice before buying him really want...

Annual release of Diageo's cask-strength whiskies.

Pure intense Lagavulin. Briny, beautiful citrus, seeweed, earthy peat, so much going on here. Pretty perfect one.

Decent as before, a true peat bomb with a lot of coast characters.

Nose: Beautiful nose - smoke with vegetables - herbs Parsley, thyme, rosemary, chives with a splash of lemon Taste: Pepper - Olives - Lemon and Gravedruit Nice Laga, although I did not like the cold smoke so much. Blind tasting! As Lagavulin hard to unmask, for me at least. Now that you know it, memories of 8-year-old Lagavulin are awakening Thanks to Archer for the better experience

The nose is that of a classic Islay whisky from the Bourbon barrel and offers everything you would expect in such a case. The palate lacks the variety of flavors that others can do better. This one knows only in the second sip to convince more. The finish is also quite one-dimensional, but what he does, he does right. blind tasting

Very surprised for the sweet taste, complex, very delicious, perfect whisky, I love it

Unfortunately, the aroma was spoiled by sealing wax, which closed the cork of the sample, although it does not repel and break the characteristic notes. Taste: peat, pepper, salted caramel, burnt logs from the hearth, notes of leather and wood, lemon, roasted nuts. Finish medium, warming with spices and fire. 21.5-22.5-22-22

Aroma - alcohol, barrel. There is smoke and peat in the background, very far away. Atypical aroma! Taste - salt, alcohol, tin! Iodine (from where?!), burnt fire. There is almost no smoke. Comes with water)

Pushy, rude in some ways, but at the same time very pleasant. I like it!

[November, 2021] I had a dram during a FoSM club tasting and found it very good like all these 12-years old Lagavulin editions - but not as good as the 2019 and 2021 Diageo special releases. There is a little too much wood impact in this batch while the special releases are more balanced. Nonetheless, very quaffable...

Islay's elemental force - strong, intense, maritime, very smoky - simply a "top malt!"

Slight ash fire. Deep sherry peat. Spicy and peat finish.

19 21 20 20 80 a weak young nose, overall a good winter whisky, but nothing special, sorry ....

First devastating impact: oil, unlit cigarette, sea, acetone, then slowly the cereals (very light) come out. With water the peat is dampened and becomes sweeter, cereal and fruity. A "battle" whisky, to be tasted during a stormy night while observing the raging of the elements

Not as stellar as previous vintages unfortunately. Perhaps Georgie already had one foot out the door! Let’s hope she makes a cask strength Port Ellen 12 in 2030 :)

iodine, citrus, vanilla, ash, spices, apple, pepper, iodine, quite powerful almost a bit brutal, very nice

The creamy flavor was very pronounced and persisted throughout.

A bit fail in intensity from previous batches, but premium quality too!

The flavor theme is excellent and combines into a very satisfying melody. I can’t get over how the varying characters create such volatility amongst the sips and noses. Its like each smell or taste is somewhat unique from the last. My only wish is that there is more intensity which is very odd for a cask strength whisky.

A powerful dram with loads of Lagavulin spirit character shining through. Like the 8 year old but much sweeter and more flavour punch. Overall my impression of this whisky is sweet and peaty, not sweet-peat but 2 separate entities. The refill casks have left behind loads of sweet vanilla character without any of the tannins and has allowed the peat content to be shine through. Value (£95) : 6/10

Smoked lemon candy, but with alcohol

N20 P21 F20 B20 Those release numbers always correlates with the quality. In negative sense)

Very powerful and intense smoky malt, with beautiful citrus notes. The smoke does not hit 100% but my taste is still pleasant. For the called price of 100 € for me quite expensive.

Always a highlight and a pleasure. The 2018er is no exception.

I don't think it is as good as the SR of 2021 and 2022, and the balance is a bit worse. Of course, I still like it very, very much, laga is yyds

Earthy peat, a little muddy, herbaceous, typical of the distillery, embellished with a beautiful lemony pulp. Very fine iodine, almost chiseled, dusty, coarse salt, delicate tide, sea air. Very nice balance. Some seafood in passing, oysters, mussels, razor clams, whelks. Marine freshness mixed with peat and white fruits, it's magnificent. Juiced oranges. Grapefruit. Litchi. And we come back to peat land, old hay. In the mouth, it's just measured, the citrus fruits are not excessive, the spices robust but not too much, cumin, gray pepper, cloves. Rather strong ginger. Long and powerful finish, honeyed, molasses, discreet vanilla, a drop of caramel. Peanut butter. This is the 6th 12 year old Lagavulin I have tasted, and I found it to be the best. https://ilikesky2020.blogspot.com/2023/05/lagavulin-12-yo-special-release-2018.html

This is great! Burning power. Just a bit too sharp-light. It's a speaker with to much tremble and to little bass.

On point Laga 12. Harmoneous @57.8% abv., obviously bears a lot of similarities with the predecessors, but I prefer it a notch over the 2017 edition which I just tried H2H. The nose is more reserved in comparison, but more importantly the dryness on the finish and the oak notes make it taste more mature and elegant than 12 years and elevate this year's edition over last year's special release in my book. Strong recommendation. Yet another fine powerhouse in a velvet glove. Chapeau, Lagavulin! ~90p.

One of the best 2010s Lagavulin 12s, not that there really are any misses in this series. Tasted with Lagavulin 12 2017 (88 pts.) and Elements of Islay Lg9 (88).

Smell: full bouquet with a sweet, earthy, immense peat note, seaweed, differentiated, multi-layered, decent. Tar note, very light heavy oil, fine liquorice note, oily, nougat in the base Taste: very powerful start, the alcohol is growing too fast, but is also super integrated, charred wood, again German. Sweetness with fine yellow lime notes as a counterpart, long finish, the German. has astringent notes of heavily hopped beer - Riegele Ratsherren Pils sends a friendly greeting from Augsburg! Color: Lightening yellow gold, narrow WR, clear Conclusion: Even with the 2018er, the sweetness is always present with a lot of pressure and thus again shows the clear character traits of the 12er CS, the fine nuances to the previous year could be looked for to discuss - but in my opinion it doesn't need to, because the 2018er is also on delivers a proven high level and for me here again the Lagavulin fist in a velvet glove beckons ...

Good, but there is no explosion.

As in previous years, the 12 CS is again a safe bank. Young at maturity, but still mature and complete.

We've got a sheet of dusty snow covering Southern Ontario today. The kind that flutters like welted dandelions, and floats around a long time before landing like a petal and coating everything with soft and shiny white. We warm up today with some Lagavulin 12, 2018 release. 57.8% ABV. Islay. Cask strength NCF and no coloring. $215 CAD. We sniff around. Scott smells a bunch of stuff. Lemons. Grass. Salt. Trevor says olives. We get excited at that. There's a debate whether this is closer to the Lagavulin 8 or the 16. Simon says it's got elements of both, the peat of the 16 but the youth, lemon, and liveliness of the 8. Sean and Scott are leaning towards the 16 just based on the nose. Simon gets a nutty/amaretto/marzipan type of thing. Sean pulls seaweed out. There's so much to it that we can't pinpoint. There's a sweetness. Sweet & sour type of thing. Indescribable sweetness. We cheers. Oh man. Simon's breathing fire on camera. It's got an explosion to it. He says when you swish it around it goes nuts. Lagavulin 8 on roids. It's pretty much a copy paste from the nose. Trevor's still pulling his olives. It's not as present on the palate but still there. Lemon, earthy peat, salt. Way more complexity and depth than the 8 though. Really hard doing justice to this with tasting notes. Simon says it's like Listerine, you just want to breathe. The finish never ends. Scott calls it creamy. Intense. Potent. Reviews: Trevor likes the olive that pops. That's new. So much going on, feels like there's still things to discover. Long finish. Loves that punch in the face. He goes 90 on this one. Kyle matches that 90. For some reason it reminds him of Laphroaig PX. Nothing he doesn't like about it. It's up there with the Uigeadail for him. Scott puts it at an 88. He still likes the Lagavulin 8 a bit better. He loves this stuff, but the 8 is less explosive and harsh, more balanced. Simon says this gets his testosterone going. This makes him feel like a real man. Gets him excited. It's the best scotch he's had thus far, and he goes 93. Sean likes everything Lagavulin and this is no exception. He goes 89. Averages out to 90 flat. Overall: this is a man's drink. We agree overall this is closer to the Lagavulin 8 than the 16, but a lot more intense and complex. It barely edges out Uigeadail as our number 1 rated scotch here on S&P. The flavors are great but it's really the feel and the fullness that gets us tonight. It's got a price tag to it, which makes Lagavulin 8 a much better value buy. At $90 CAD, we rated the 8 at a 88.8 average. If you've got the wallet and you like the idea of something excessively potent, then by all means, Lagavulin 12 is a winner. If you like something more balanced and aren't looking to break the bank, Lagavulin 8 has similar tasting notes for less than half the price, and it's by no means a light scotch. We look forward to trying some other batches of the Lagavulin 12 and comparing. Cheers! The S&P Crew. see more reviews at www.scotchandponder.com

Beautiful. Good like the 2014 and 2019. Loads of maritime.

Bright, assertive and powerful. Cool lagavulin! But one dog ruined the moment (

I was lucky enough to get what were probably the last two bottles of this stunning Lagavulin left in my country, from some random Spanish online retailer. Twelve years old, cask strength, matured in refill ex-bourbon casks... a dream come true for someone like me. I even thought the price was fairly reasonable. Surprisingly, though, this is a whisky that took me an absurdly long time to truly appreciate. I don't think I fully grasped just how mind-blowing it was until I had reached the halfway point of the bottle. It reminds me a lot of Port Askaig 100º (basically cask strength Caol Ila), but as a tamed, infinitely smoother and more complex version of that whisky. I have absolutely no idea why, and I'm not even going to try to speculate. Nose: Super well behaved for a cask strength Islay malt. Huge yet remarkably refined maritime notes, with seashells washed by the tide, sea breeze, seaweed and grilled anchovies, alongside plenty of citrus, especially lemon zest. Everything is gentle and restrained in an almost excessively sophisticated way. The smoky notes themselves are relatively light, woven into the maritime character as a soft ashiness reminiscent of an extinguished bonfire. Very perfumed too, with floral notes that remind me of white wine, and wonderfully funky, with pungent fish market aromas and even a touch of slightly overripe fish. Some old, damp dunnage, herbs and soy sauce. It feels dense and concentrated, with savory, umami-rich undertones throughout. The balance and depth are simply astonishing. Palate: This is where the whisky truly shines. Judging by the nose, you would expect something somewhat bolder and rougher, yet it is unbelievably gentle and... elegant. I'm barely exaggerating when I say this 57.8% ABV whisky drinks like water. It is silky smooth, which contrasts dramtically with the incredibly dense and saturated profile it delivers. It opens with a waxy, ashy texture dominated by salty maritime notes and bright citrus before the smoky side gradually takes over. Lots of grilled seafood drizzled with lemon juice, fresh oysters, seawater, all balanced by a surprisingly sweet, custardy vanilla note. Then comes a burst of moderate to high peat smoke (but very far from truly explosive), mostly ashy and earthy, but carrying a distinct iodine edge as well. Gentle white pepper, malty richness, grilled pineapple, hints of coconut and banana, plus subtle mineral nuances. This kind of ultra-complex, uncompromising distillate always plays tricks on my mind, conjuring fleeting impressions that appear and disappear before I can quite pin them down: fried onions, plasticine, olive oil, lychee, gasoline. Absurdly explorable. Finish: The ashiness continues to build until everything seems to settle around the powerful image of an ashtray full of cigar ash. Through that cigar smoke emerge more seaweed and grilled seafood, while the lemon gradually shifts toward fresh ginger. Fresh fish, seawater, pepper and Fino sherry. It leaves behind exactly the feeling of walking along the beach, that unmistakable fishy saltiness that I appreciate so much. This is one of the most elegant whiskies I have ever tasted, whatever that actually means. Perhaps because I'm basically poor, I've become accustomed to whiskies with at least some noticeable alcoholic bite, and maybe that's why this one felt so disorienting at first. In that sense, it reminds me of the Octomore X.1 series. Same lack of challenge. Objectively, this has to be one of the best, if not the best, Lagavulin I've ever had. Yet personally, there are times when I simply want... more. More of everything. Sometimes it feels a little too restrained, too civilized, too domesticated. I want more peat, more alcohol, more funk. I want more Sturm und Drang and less Sehnsucht. I had to learn the hard way that pouring yourself a dram of this whisky when you're craving the slap in the face of a peat bomb is like putting on classical music when what you really want is to dance to rock. This may well be a personal quirk, but especially at first it triggered the same subconscious resistance I feel toward black-tie dinners, Catholic Masses in Gothic cathedrals, or discussing academic philosophy in a casual setting. Sometimes it feels as though the proper place to drink it would be inside a museum. Maybe that's why I occasionally prefer the Lagavulin 12 Tequila Cask Finish. The tequila acts as that wild, eccentric wildcard which, by contrast, makes Lagavulin's characteristically over-refined elegance stand out in the right way. Left to its own devices, it retreats into a kind of suffocating self-satisfied refinement that sometimes makes me roll my eyes. You're supposed to be bursting into pirate songs, damn it, not discussing the stock market! All of this rambling is simply my way of justifying why I can't quite bring myself to give this whisky the +9.5/10 it probably deserves. Yes, it is absolutely mind-blowing, but somehow it feels... annoyingly geriatric, priestly, pretentious? Anyway, I'm genuinely thankful to have had the opportunity to become familiar with this bottle (and I even have a second one!). And it is simply a perfect showcase of this elusive distillery's profile, for which there are virtually no IBs available. This is an extraordinarily elegant and refined expression of the explosively maritime profile that so many Islay distilleries strive to achieve, and honestly, it comes remarkably close to perfection. The balance between the coastal notes and everything else is spectacular, the progression from the nose through the palate into the finish is nothing short of masterful, and the solemnity and elegance with which it presents this style of whisky genuinely leave me almost speechless, much like the Procesión del Silencio during the Holy Week in Spain. It feels old and dignified in a weirdly spiritual sense... perhaps just a little too much.

Nice light straw color! As if still immature in taste and more like a new-make, but fully developed in aroma. Most of all, I was not impressed with the finish with its bitterness and perfumery. Quite simple and uncomplicated, not yet ready for bottling, in my opinion. Please pay attention to admins! The rating is obviously screwed up! N:22 T:20 F:19 B:20

A model of high quality in low years, the most anticipated in SR every year is Legavulin.