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W Club Decanted x Laphroaig
A brand whose flavour profile was once described as 'a hospital on fire' for its intensely medicinal smoke, Laphroaig is certainly something on which everyone has an opinion - and our opinion is that we love it! It is unapologetically peaty, powerful, dramatic, and rich where many drams would opt to soften their edges in a bid to appeal to all.
In this exciting, and much-anticipated, new instalment of the W Club Decanted, Luke Crowley-Holland gets the chance to speak with Laphroaig's Distillery Manager, George Campbell.
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Like many folk born and bred in the whisky-rich region of Islay, George's career into whisky was a natural one, having begun as a tour guide for Laphroaig before successfully landing a traineeship with Diageo, and going on to work for Cardhu, Cragganmore, Talisker, and other distilleries to cement his knowledge of how to create fantastic liquids.
But in this episode, the big talking point is, of course, Laphroaig's Elements series, and their latest exciting release; Elements 3.0, which is now exclusively available from The Whisky Shop!
"It's a very complex dram. Even when you look behind the smoke, there's a lot of layers."
Each of the Elements outputs have focused on playful experimentation with the nuts and bolts process of whisky making; a delicious game of 'what if...' that tweaks small or large elements of the traditional methods to create a new world of flavours.
"What we've done here with the elements range is we've come up with different tweaks of the mashing or pre-maturation recipes [...] It's a range that's there to give us the opportunity to celebrate the flavours and different methods of stretching the classic Laphroaig flavour in different directions rather than purely just doing a cask finish."
With Elements 3.0, George explains how they've moved on completely from experiments of the past, leaving mashing, fermentation, and distillation alone to focus purely on the malting side of things, and how cranking up the kiln heat has given them a new lease on smokey flavours.
Find out more about Laphroaig Elements here
Featured Drams
Listened to the pod and want to get your hands on your very own bottle of Laphroaig Elements? You're in the right place - you can now buy these instore and online exclusively at The Whisky Shop!
Fermented for 55 hours in two sizes of mash tun and with two types of wort, cloudy and semi-cloudy, before a maturation in bourbon casks.
"Elements 1.0 has got that classic Laphroaig solid base of earthy smoke, it's medicinal but it's got a cranked up note of really nice sharp smoked pineapple, you've got your classic dry oak on the finish, and it's got a touch of spice too."
Distilled during a particularly frosty January, Elements 2.0 takes fermentation beyond Laphroaig's standard of 55 hours by experimenting with of a range of longer fermentations, all the way up to 115 hours.
"A really wide spectrum of fruity flavours [...] it's not tropical this time that pops out, it's really zesty apple. So it's like peated toffee apple, that's effectively how I would describe it."
Born from an unplanned kiln fire that led to unusually high peat-burning temperatures, this edition offers an intense distillation of Laphroaig’s iconically bold character.
"It tends to pick up less of the medicinal smoke than we're used to, so it's more of a bonfire, a charcoal, wood-based [smoke]. So we've got the home base; the standard Laphroaig layer of medicinal smoke, but we've also put this other layer of smoke in there as well [...] bitter chocolate and coffee, caramel, toffee."
Want to try these tasty drams for yourself? Get your tickets to one of our exclusive tasting events!
About Laphroaig
The ‘lovers’ of Islay’s Laphroaig are many, making it the world’s best-selling peated whisky, the sixth-best-selling single malt whisky globally, and the number three single malt in the UK. High profile aficionados of its distinctive style include HRH The Prince of Wales, who bestowed his Royal Warrant on the distillery in 1994.
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