In 2016, the whisky world watched Lagavulin like a hawk, anticipating what expressions would be released for their 200th anniversary. When they announced the 8 year old as their world wide limited edition release, quite a few of us had mixed feelings. Their story behind the release was to recreate an 8 year old whisky that Alfred Barnard had tried at Lagavulin in the 1880’s, of which he described as “exceptionally fine”.

It’s a nice story tying in the famous whisky historian and Lagavulin but beyond that I can’t see much relevance. Perhaps someone can enlighten me. I don’t see how the 1880’s has any special meaning with respect to the 200th anniversary and it seems unlikely that they would be able to recreate that same whisky. So what other explanations can we come up with for this seemingly lackluster big anniversary release?

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