About a month ago, I led a Scotch tasting at Town Hall Brewery in Minneapolis. Over the next few days, I will be posting the notes I used, and ending with some of the questions people asked during the event.
The fifth whisky of the night was Talisker's Distillers Edition from 2005. Talisker is distilled on the island of Skye off the east coast of the Scottish mainland. Since it's part of the Diageo Distiller's Edition line, this means that it's double matured. What this means is that the spirit is aged in standard Bourbon barrels, and then later is transferred to a second kind of barrel to age for at least a few more months. In the case of the Talisker, it spends about ten years in the first barrels, then transferred to Amoroso Sherry casks for a couple more years. The 2005 edition was distilled in 1993, so roughly twelve years split between to the two kinds of casks.
Distiller's Editions are limited edition, and each year they might change what they decide to do with the various varieties. The fact that we were tasting a 2005 edition in 2008 suggests that it's a bit of an old stock. Once the distributor and the bar run out, you won't be able to get any more of it. So if you're really blown away by a limited edition, make sure to get a lot of it.
The last of the night was the only Islay: The Laphroaig 30. The island of Islay is known for its smoky, peaty whiskies... sometimes referred to as "band-aid" whisky. Laphroaig is currently owned by Fortune Brands. They produce brands such as Jim Beam and Knob Creek to name a few. As mentioned before in the convenience of Bourbon and Scotch's requirements on casks, Fortune Brands is most likely supplying its former Beam casks to Laphroaig to keep them in the family.
The Laphroaig 30 is a very old whisky, two to three times older than the other whiskies in the tasting. And like with the Talisker being a limited edition, this whisky is rare. But not because it's a limited edition. Within the last few months, the parent company decided that it would stop producing the 30-year and replace it with a 25-year expression. The ten year old espression is being phased out and replaced by their quarter-cask expression. The 15 year is being phased out as well, possibly replaced by the cask strength or a 12 year old. This is scarcity, in a nutshell. The 30-year old stock that's available now will not be replenished. It will likely be many years before the 30 year old is re-introduced, if at all. Eventually what'll happen is that the local distributors will run out of stock, followed closely by the liquor stores. Bars will be able to stretch out their stock for a while longer, but the bars will be the last place you'll find the 30 just before it all runs out.
So if you like the Laphroaig 30 and have access to it; relish it. Because someone down in Kentucky decided that Scotland shouldn't produce it anymore.