Lagavulin Fèis Ìle 2023 14-Year-Old Review
The Lagavulin Fèis Ìle 2023 14-Year-Old was made available for Fèis Ìle 2023 on May 27. This release sold for 220 pounds or roughly $285, so it is one of this year’s more pricey Fèis Ìle whiskies.
For the first time ever, Lagavulin finished this whisky using armagnac casks. Armagnac is a brandy made in a region of Gascony also called Armagnac. If you have never heard of armagnac, that is not surprising as less of it is made each year than another form of brandy called cognac. According to the Wikipedia page linked on armagnac linked above, only 3 million bottles of armagnac are produced each year compared to 220 million cognac bottles.
Brandy is made by distilling grapes as opposed to whisky which relies on distilling grain. The result is a sweeter spirit, but armagnac has also been described as smoky. It will be interesting to see how that sweet and smoky flavor will work with a peated whisky.
Much like you see more cognac sold each year, the casks used to mature cognac are also more frequently used to mature whisky than armagnac. Brandy is something I have had less than a handful of times in my life, so it’s hard for me to have a sense of how this whisky will be influenced. We also do not know how long this whisky was finished in armagnac compared to how long it was matured in the other casks used: American and European Oak.
Having never had a brandy-matured whisky, I am excited to see how this one turned out and am hoping it also gives a sense of what cognac-matured whiskies are like.
The Basics
Aged: 14 years
Bottles available: 3,024
Casks: American and European Oak, Armagnac
ABV: 58.4%
Color: Gold
Nose: Butter, wood, rubber, apple
Cost: $380.16 (auction fees and shipping were $70.88)
Purchased at: Scotch Whisky Auctions (Auction 145)
Taste
The first sip gives a taste of butterscotch followed by heavy smoke, raisins, and cinnamon. It finishes with cinnamon, vanilla, and intense smoky flavors of burnt rubber and ash.
Neat or With Water
Despite the high ABV of 58.4%, I found drinking this whisky neat was still very smooth and lacked a burn from the alcohol. It is so intensely smoky and flavorful neat that water seemed to not change much about this whisky. I would recommend drinking it neat.
Summary
Accessibility: Your best bet for finding this whisky is in whisky auctions. There are 3,024 bottles available though, so it is not the rarest whisky. I would expect this bottle will come up in whisky auctions for the foreseeable future, which can give you some flexibility about waiting if the price is too high.
Price: $380 is definitely well above the retail price for this whisky, so I do not feel like I got a great deal on this bottle. In the auction I participated in, bottles of this whisky went for between $330 on the low end to $380 on the high end with shipping and auction fees included. My advice would be to be patient with getting this whisky in auctions as prices do eventually fall closer to retail price. However, the retail price of this whisky is still quite high.
Quality: This whisky delivers an incredible combination of flavors that work pretty well together. The intense smoky flavor can at first make it challenging to appreciate the sweeter flavors, but, if you enjoy heavily peated whiskies, you will appreciate how well the smoke comes together with the butterscotch, raisin, and cinnamon flavors. It also does an amazing job of masking any alcohol burn despite being a 58.4% ABV whisky.
Score: 8/10 (See our scoring system explanation)
If you are looking for a smoky punch in the face, this whisky is here to please. The only flavor that is incredibly strong is the smoke, but the sweeter tastes of butterscotch, raisin, vanilla, and cinnamon all play a nice supporting role. To me, this is a much better version of the Ardbeg Hypernova with its heavy peat flavor and stronger complimentary sweet flavors.
The other truly impressive aspect of this whisky is that it is incredibly smooth despite a very high ABV. Regardless of drinking neat or with water, the alcohol burn is not present and allows you to appreciate a dram of this.
The price of this whisky is on the higher end, and, even with an 8/10 score, it’s hard to think about getting another bottle at its current price. Despite that I think this whisky offers more than the Hypernova, I would rather go for the Hypernova because of its lower price and accessibility. Make no mistake though that this whisky is a great one for those who love a heavily peated dram.