The Olde Mouldy and Federal Wine & Spirits present A heartfelt, happy 200th birthday to Lagavulin!
{a masterclass dreamed up by a trio of peat-freaks with overactive imaginations}
Wednesday, November 2, 6-8pm at Journeyman restaurant 9 Sanborn Court, Somerville, Massachusetts advance tickets required*
Ah, Lagavulin. You probably have a bottle of the smoky, sultry 16-year-old sitting on your shelf right now. It is so beloved that comedian Nick Offerman has recorded a number of brilliant videos that pay homage to the Hebridean giant. But unlike some distilleries that have several expressions at different ages, with Lagavulin, the 16 is all you get … or is it?
Join Joe Howell of Federal Wine, and Tania and Nate of the Olde Mouldy (Nate formerly of Federal too!) as we taste Lagavulins you never knew existed (nor could have afforded had you known) alongside the distillery’s classic offerings in a night of stories, conviviality, history, and no small amount of reverence for a once-in-a-lifetime assemblage of whiskies.
This year, to celebrate its 200th birthday, Lagavulin has released a limited edition 8-year-old expression in a nod to Alfred Barnard, whose 1867 travelogue chronicled his visit to a great many distilleries, including Lagavulin, where he quite enjoyed their 8-year-old single malt. We’ll taste it, and everyone who attends the tasting will receive an entire bottle to enjoy at home (our humblest apologies, we mean the new release, not the 19th century bottling).
We will of course taste Lagavulin’s flagship 16-year-old (a good place to get our bearings), as well as the Distiller’s Edition, which is finished in Pedro Ximénez sherry casks.
Then we’ll disinter some relics of yesteryear in order to fully grok Lagavulin’s potential.
Last year Joe attended Islay’s enormously popular malt and music festival, Feis Ile. He brought home a bottle released exclusively for the event, available only at the distillery, that sold out within hours.
We’ll taste Lagavulin’s two oldest-ever releases, the 30-year-old and the 37-year-old. They were both distilled in 1976 and broke records for price as well as age (also they’re delicious – Wine Enthusiast Magazine scored them each 107).
Quite uncharacteristically, 2007 saw the first ever 21-year-old release that deviated from Lagavulin’s heretofore established norm by being heavily sherried. Some people say sherry can mask a distillate’s subtleties, but most say that this beast is the best whisky they’ve ever tasted.
Lastly, we’ll try something so unspeakably rare that it couldn’t even be called legendary, because legends can’t form around a whisky that never properly existed. Few know that the building currently serving as Lagavulin’s visitor’s center used to be a distillery in its own right – Islay’s other lost distillery, Malt Mill. It was never bottled as a single malt, but the Olde Mouldy has procured a bottle of blended whisky from the 1940s called Mackie’s, rumored to contain roughly 50% Malt Mill, for us to taste. It’s the closest any one of us could hope to come to experiencing this long-closed chapter in Islay’s history.
Upon the conclusion of the tasting, food will be available from Journeyman and the full Olde Mouldy whisky menu will be on offer to celebrate the heartfelt, happy (belated) first birthday of the Olde Mouldy.
Tickets: $355 per person, includes a tasting of 8 whiskies and a bottle of the limited-edition 8-year-old (bottle must be picked up at Federal Wine & Spirits). To reserve a seat, email yesplease@oldemouldy.com with your name, phone number and the number of tickets you would like, and we will contact you for payment information.
*Space is extremely limited due to the greed of a couple of angels who thought it was OK to keep drinking after the damn whisky was bottled.
Joe Howell
Federal Wine & Spirits
Email: info@federalwine.com
Phone: (617) 367-8605
Web: http://www.federalwine.com/
