Laphroaig Distillery, Scotland     founded: 1815 | active
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Summer is in the air with a flurry of newly cut wood and grass ready to turn into silage. Whilst lazily imbibing a new book with a breakfast delight of a barbequed fruit salad: bananas, pink lady apples and grapefruit, followed by buttered toast. This does justice to soothing the remnants of last night’s spontaneous soiree. An interesting mix of cider, sherry and apple sourz chasers served with green olives. A sneaky undercut reminder of whisky’s longstanding medicinal and antiseptic properties in the form of iodine and chlorine but also veering towards nail polish remover (questionably more preferable than the Urinal cake). This is remedied by a secret stash of brandy balls and pear car sweets.

This was surprisingly followed by a firework eruption to the palate of sour worm sweets, salt & vinegar crisps, malted fruit loaf, barbequed aubergines, cranberries and aniseed. In contrast, the comforting presence of ol’ faithful Werthers Original and rhubarb custard sweets soothed the sparks. The hint of a dirty sock was not completely overridden by the popular swirl of brine water, starting in a rock pool before being swept off and drowned in the sea.

It starts like an atomic fireball, spitting like deep fried chilli or bitterly biting into an Aspirin. Over time changing from salted liquorice ‘spunk’, mellowing into the more pleasant flavour of applewood smoked cheese, slowly fading into rosemary and sawdust. To be precise it mimicked the last half hour of ‘The Return of the King’.

~£47 (50cl)

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We've always scored out of 10 in our group (see number in red box, below), with scores regularly given across that spectrum. The value out of 100 below is adjusted to the scale most commonly used for whisky reviews, to allow for better comparison.

84 / 100