Well, I finally found the 2024 Cairdeas in the Twin Cities. I don’t mean to suggest that it had been hard to find until now. For all I know, it’s been out and easily available for a while. It’s just that I had not looked. But a week ago I stopped in at South Lyndale Liquors to buy some salumi (yes, I now go to liquor stores to buy cured meats) and when I took a look at their single malt whisky section, there it was. $85 was the price, I believe—quite reasonable in the current market. I noted two things of interest right away: 1) this is the first Cairdeas since 2011 (at least) to be packaged not in a tube but in a box; 2) it has an age statement. Personally, I prefer tubes to boxes but, really, who gives a fuck? The age statement is interesting though. Not just because it’s 10 years old but because of the way it’s supposed to have been put together. Apparently, this year’s Cairdeas is comprised of whisky from casks of the previous cask strength Cairdeas incarnations of the Triple Wood and PX releases. Why is that interesting? Well, the Triple Wood Cairdeas was released in 2019 and the PX in 2021. So either they’ve vatted leftover Triple Wood casks that were a few years older than 10 years of age with PX casks that just hit that number or the Triple Wood Cairdeas was very young indeed in 2019. Well, I guess that’s not really very interesting. More interesting, or rather, amusing, is that Laphroaig is now apparently approaching the Cairdeas releases the same way I approach bottles I’m not terribly enthused about finishing once they enter the home stretch: by mixing them together and hoping for something more interesting than the originals. Let’s see if that’s what we have here.

Laphroaig Cairdeas 2024, Cask Favorites (52.4%; Triple Wood and PX casks; from my own bottle)

Nose: Sweet pipe tobacco and pencil lead on the first sniff. Some orange peel and quite a bit of oak alongside on the second. Phenolic smoke too, yes. Continues in that vein. Gets sweeter and stickier with time with some apricot jam and a bit of toffee; some of the oak turns to cherrywood. A few drops of water and the toffee expands.

Palate: Comes in as indicated by the nose. Quite a bit of char in the smoke here and then burnt rope. Quite approachable at full strength; good texture. More oak with each sip and more bitterness (even as some sweet fruit peeps through). Let’s see what water does for it. Well, it pushes back the bitterness but the oak is still here.

Finish: Long. The smoke takes over here and then yields to a sticky sweet note; the pencil lead re-emerges late along with a fair bit of salt. Less sweetness here with water but also more of the pencil lead.

Comments: This bottle has been open for a week and I’ve had about a third of it. I think I liked the first few pours more than I have the last few. Hopefully, it will pick back up with more air in the bottle but right now there’s just a bit too much oak on the palate and a bit too much cloying sweetness on the finish. That’s not to say that it’s not a pleasant whisky, because it is. But right now it doesn’t add up to more than the sum of the stated parts.

Rating: 85 points. Pulled up with water.