A limited-edition Lagavulin single malt made in collaboration with actor Nick Offerman, inspired by his Parks & Recreation character Ron Swanson's love of Lagavulin whisky. Matured for 11 years, this single malt has been finished for four months in casks that previously held Guinness beer from the Open Gate Brewery, creating layers of dark chocolate, roasted coffee and sweet caramel notes amid intense peat smoke, charred oak and salty sea spray on the palate.
Review 140 14th December 2021
Lagavulin Offerman Edition 11 Year Old Islay Single Malt Whisky Guinness Cask Finish!
There we said it, quite a mouthful.
This whisky is the subject of this review.
Lets clear a few things up with the name,
1. Its a Lagavulin
2. Its 11 Year Old
3. Its a Single Malt Whisky
4. Its had a 4 Month finishing period in ex-Guinness Casks
5. Its from Islay
6. It's sponsor is the Actor/Comedian/Craft Woodworking Nick Offerman who is a Lagavulin fan - Several mentions in his role as Ron Swanson in the comedy show Parks and Recreation (Available on Netflix) and his various sketches or ads which you can find on YouTube.
This the 11 year old 2021 realease, is the second Offerman Edition.
Initially release for the US market, a limited supply was made available to the home market on the Malts.com website which is operated by the owner Diageo.
The initial single bottle allocation sold out, as is usual for limited bottles, in a very short space of time. The bottle did re-appear later on the Malts site, however, it was part of a bundle offering, The 11 year bundled with the 8 year or 16 year or Game of Thrones edition, etc, a pretty canny tactic by Diageo, one that has been repeated elsewhere this year for limited edition whiskies.
However, Diageo did release allocations to whisky retailers, we got our bottle from The Whisky Exchange.
Retailing for £64.95, bottled at 46% ABV and we assume chill filtered and coloured as is normal for Lagavulin, but this is an assumption, but because its not confimed that they arent, we have to score accordingly, so it receives a value score of 87.1 out of 100, for an 11 year old whisky it should do a little better than that, not offering the best value, however, because it has a unique finish and is a limited edition, it can be excused, but only just.
The final thing to note is the box it comes with is a little more flimsy and less quality than the 16 year old and 8 year old boxes.
On the nose, it smells like a Lagavulin, the peat and smoke is there and is a light ash with a touch of savoury maybe with some BBQ notes. There is some maritime influence of sea spray and brine. Some toffee and maybe berry fruit (and possibly some sherry influence) with some sweet creaminess.
On the palate, it has a creamy syrupy texture with some sweetness. It starts sweet then the smoke arrives, whilst it is powerful, it doesn't dominate, you can identify toffee, fruits starting with lemon and grapefruit followed by a hint of some darker fruits with a fruitcake vibe. There is wood spice, but also ginger, white and black pepper leading to some honey and the earthiness of peat.
The minty finish however is missing and instead finishes with wood bitterness.
This bottle while unmistakably a Lagavulin, is not upto the standard of the 16 year old even with the higher ABV. The Guinness influence is not obvious, maybe it is bringing the creaminess and toffee to the party, but with only 4 months of finishing, we can't help thinking its a bit gimmicky. After all Guinness is a Diageo owned brand so the casks shouldn't have cost anything at all to be used for this process and in our experience working in a pub, Guinness was always delivered in metal barrels, maybe they have some fancy wood barrels in Ireland or London or Open Gate Brewery in Maryland where the cask actually came from.
For an overall score we need to look the Lagavulin 16 which scored 89 out of 100, considering the younger age statement, higher price and underwhelming finish, we score this the 11 year old 86 out of 100. Its not terrible, but we were expecting more.