Which bottle did you just buy and why?

I just bought a Lot 40 Rye. We’re having dinner at my wife’s cousin’s place on Friday and both her and her husband are whisky drinkers. But both of them are creatures of habit. Their selection is usually limited to Forty Creek Barrel Select or Ardmore Legacy. Decent, but I think I’ll introduce them to Lot 40.

@OdysseusUnbound what a step up. Lot 40 is so much more flavourful than what they normally drink. I hadn’t tried it until recently and really enjoyed it.

@nooch They also drink Laphroaig Quarter Cask from time to time, but that stuff ain’t cheap in these parts.

@Mancub, Your points are well taken.

I have so much to say with regard to your comments, but I'll keep it short and tight. My grandfather, born in 1897, often told me "believe only half of what you see and none of what you hear". There are a lot of people out there talkin' whisky and they don't know shit from shinola. I was at the master class with Livermore and his contingent of handlers; I walked away with a very good understanding of this whisky. It is double column distilled. I didn't need to be told this, but I asked and it was confirmed (with a splash of rye. I didn't know the exact length of time of the finish, I assumed it was a couple of months; however, @Nozinan got the correct info recently from Livermore. It is "the last year"...which makes sense because 48 months for new oak to air dry and "season" will not take the sharp hit of vanilla out of the oak, but it will tame the oak tannins much like Maker's Mark does with their oak (9 months through a summer) and that bourbon is some soft!

Labels are just wrapping. The real story is seldom on them...and sometimes there is so much info you wince, because it is usually smoke and mirrors or as we say up here, fuckin' bullshit!

Just purchased a Laphroaig 18 year (25 May 1999) SMWS 29.226 - "Seaside surprise" from a refill ex-Oloroso sherry butt because it was the best bottle of the 8 that were sampled at the tasting event that I attended on Monday night. It was also a perfect example of my favorite style of whisky; Big, bold, beautiful, smoky, peated and heavily sherried. You can still taste it 20 minutes later after one sip.

I didn’t buy it, but I got a bottle of Lagavulin 16 as a “good-bye and good luck” gift from my co-workers. I’ve been teaching for 10 years and next year I’m working for the school board in a different capacity. I’ll likely have a dram of this tonight to celebrate.

@OdysseusUnbound Nice gift! I look forward to it participating in our next exchange!

Approaching the long weekend with a newly purchased pair of delicious Canadians: Corby's Lot No 40 Cask Strength 55% abv and Highwood Ninety 20 YO 45% abv.

The Lot 40 is currently $70 and will be $100 for the fall release, a 43% increase! Highwood Ninety was an in-store promo at 20% off, $46.70 with taxes. Both are must-have Canadians! Both are awesome!

...and a BIG THANK YOU TO @Nozinan for hunting down for me some additional Lot No 40 Cask Strength.

I had planned to buy a bottle of Bruichladdich Scottish Barley Classic Laddie (no @Nozinan, not your beloved Laddie Classic 01). I was perusing a local booze shop, which I don't typically buy from due to them being a bit more expensive, when I saw a bottle of Kilkerran WIP 7 Bourbon Cask sitting all forlorn. Today, once I had gathered together all my pocket money, I went and bought it. I already have one tucked away safely and so now I don't feel so bad about cracking one open soon. I guess I feel pretty fortunate that even here at the far flung reaches of the world I can still have two of the 6000 bottles produced.

@OdysseusUnbound, was the bottle of standard Lot No 40 well received?

@paddockjudge - Yes, please do tell @OdysseusUnbound my bottle arrived last night and I'm tempted . . .

@paddockjudge It was. My wife’s cousin’s husband bought a bottle of Classic Laddie Scottish Barley. So we alternated between the two. I showed him the bottle code on the Bruichladdich website. The bottle was made from 5-10 Year Old malts, most being 8 years old. Both were good, but the Lot 40 was the clear favourite of all three of us.

Greetings to you all. Sorry about not being active on the forum recently. I was on a two week holiday divided into two parts Ho Chi Minh City followed by Tokyo.

Let me first say that, if you keep up with the news on Japanese whisky being in short supply (even in Japan), well at least in Tokyo it is quite true. Of coure we know the age statement whiskies are, but so are some of the NAS. I was hoping to pick up a bottle, or two, of the Ichiro's Malt Double Distilleries, and another bottle of the Mizunara Wood Reserve. No luck.

Of course this thread is about what I did buy, not what I couldn't buy but wanted to.

I ended up buying:

1. The Nikka 12yo (Blended Whisky, because I enjoyed the sample I had and it isn't available where I live. Plus, the bottle will make good for a decanter after it is emptied, just like the bottle for the Hibiki.)

2. Redbreast 21yo (for much less than what I would have to pay back in Denver, Colorado. How much difference? Well, I got the 21yo for 17,200 JPY, which is 156 USD. In Denver, you cannot find it for less than 269 USD. I plan to get two more when I go back, or at least one more.)

3. 200 ml Glenfarclas 15yo (why 200ml? well, I was worried I would go overweight in my check-in, but I still wanted to get it)

1 - 3, I got in a store near Tokyo Station

1. Bruichladdich The Laddie Eight (Duty free, why? Because I enjoy it and I only have one bottle, now I have two)

   I am too lazy to put up photos, but maybe I will return to the thread with a few, assuming people here want to see them.

@Hewie, that's excellent—great score! Widely acclaimed as one of the great whiskies of 2015, as you surely know.

And I know what you mean about feeling fortunate to get your paws on any, let alone multiples, of a smallish international release that like. I'm far from any whisky Mecca myself (Wisconsin), and I managed to get 3 of those same 6,000. I drained the first pretty quickly when it was new, and then later lucked into 2 more, on separate occasions. I plan to crack #2 this fall, and the final one in the distant future.

I told some of the big spenders in my club about a shop in Illinois that I knew to be sitting on a dusty pile of Scott's Selections IBs from big-name distilleries, vintage-dated from the 1970s & early 1980s, for not-insane prices. (This is the same caché of old bottles that I've surely mentioned here previously.) I returned there on Saturday, and I offered to mule anything that looked worthwhile to them.

I thought they might bite on one or two fun splurge bottles.

Instead, I came home with this haul:

(The bottle turned to its side is a 1977 Old Pulteney. I bought it for the club itself, so I had to conceal its identity in that picture when I sent it back to my buddies back home. )

Only one bottle was for me personally: one of the 1984 Caol Ilas. I'm supposed to be on a buying freeze, but it was too tempting to join the fun. Actually, my justification for that splurge—easily the most I've ever spent on a bottle—was that it's for my 40th birthday later this year.

@MadSingleMalt - nice haul!

@MadSingleMalt wow... I guess one better not ask.....?

@RikS, one better not ask what?

@RikS, oh I am sure that @MadSingleMalt is such a good customer that the vendor just gave him all of those bottles for free. :-)

@RikS, @Victor

Ohhhhh... I see. We've come to the unpleasant subject of the bill, have we not? I don't consider that a taboo subject, so your coy allusions went right over my head. My apologies.

I did a little haggling and ended up paying a notch or two less than what I'm about to list, but these were the shelf prices. And since we're talking prices & value, I'll note here that these were all cask strength. And they're not labeled as single casks, but my guess is that they are.

1977-2005 Old Pulteney: $200

1977-2004 Glenlivet: $220

1979-2004 Inverleven: $180

1981-2006 Highland Park: $210

1984-2006 Caol Ila: $300

1990-2004 Bruichladdich: $165

@MadSingleMalt sorry for the indirect questioning I was just curious.

Please help out a beginner... How should one interpret the 1981-2006 HP? That it was distilled in 81 and bottled in 2006, making it a 25yrd old?

@RikS, yes, exactly.

Except to get technical, it could have been bottled before its "birthday" in which case the 1981 Highland Park, for example, would be 24 years old instead of 25. And with all of these particular bottles, the exact dates are omitted from the labels, which is a small disappointment.

Really, the labeling on these kinda sucks. The years and ABV is pretty much all the info you get.

•I would like to know whether they're single casks.

•I would like know what kind of casks they are, especially for the distilleries that are known for sherry. (In addition to the ones I took home, this shop had an old Aberlour and an old Macallan—both of which I think most buyers would expect to be aged in sherry, but who knows?)

•And I would like to know the exact dates, especially of distillation. Part of the fun on these old bottles is (depending on your own age!) the opportunity to join the "drank something older than yourself" club. When we open that 1977 Old Pulteney, I can only guess we'll have one or two guys born in 1977 who'll lie awake that night wondering, wondering.

@MadSingleMalt well then I'm sure that the non-connoseurs might say that's a lot of money for whisky in absolute terms, but comparing with some of the "comparable" bottling I've seen here, it was a very fair deal - even at list price. I don't know if one can compare, but here a HP 25 shows at £200-360 depending on bottling which would be about $300-500.

@RikS, yes, I imagine some of my splurging buddies used a rationale just like to pull the trigger.

For me, I think those OB prices are pretty ludicrous, so I don't put much stock in the comparison. I do however, assign significant value to the fun & novelty of drinking something that old, which is not an everyday experience for me! That side of the equation is hard to measure, but it certainly goes beyond the value of a bottle in "absolute terms," as you put it.

For a special occasion or a collective buy, I think such a splurge makes sense.

@MadSingleMalt

Thos are some amazing "dusty bottles." I guess like many whisky enthusiasts I will have to be happy with mainly getting OBs. Of course, I am not complaining here. I think there are some very enjoyable OBs out there.

Congrats to your friends!

@MadSingleMalt - Personally, I think you got a great deal on all of those. The Coal Ila might be a little high, but not that much. I agree with you about wanting more details, but still a great deal. Well done!

My latest acquisition pales in comparison, but I'm excited about it. Single Cask Nation released a 13 year, heavily peated, heavily sherried Orkney Island single malt. They said that they were not allowed to name the distillery, but it was one of the two distilleries on Orkney and it wasn't named Scapa. :-) Distilled Dec. 2004, Bottled Jan. 2018 from a 2nd fill ex-Pedro Jimenez sherry hogshead (outturn was 294 bottles). I'm excited because I haven't owned a Highland Park in a while and with it being heavily peated from a single PX sherry cask, I knew I wanted a bottle. Also, the label art is pretty cool as well.

@bwmccoy ha ha I like that - "it was one of the two distilleries on Orkney and it wasn't named Scapa". Sounds tasty too.

@bwmccoy, a teenage heavily peated PX single cask from Highland Park??? That sounds like the wet dream of many a whisky fan.

@MadSingleMalt Wet dream indeed. I have recently had FullVolume: meh; Valkyrie: ok; 18: good, but not what it once was; 12: actually the best of the bunch, especially as bang for buck. I’m really waiting for HP to come out with something sensational and affordable. I don’t even care if it’s NAS.