Laphroaig is dead

Nope, just that your taste buds have matured.

Regards, hawk

Nope, that's not the case. I've made side by side tasting of older 10's and new ones, the difference is clearly noticeable.

"hawk" skrev i meddelandet news: snipped-for-privacy@corp.supernews.com...

Dunno, but the one I bought recently isn't quite what I remembered from 20 yrs ago... That assaulted my taste buds - could be that they are more seasoned nowadays... Anders

Over the years there have been several posters that have opined that Laphroaig 10, like the old grey mare, "ain't what she used to be". A couple of years ago there was some discussion along these lines, but more recently some posters have written that they thought Laphroaig was returning to a peatier flavor profile - if for no other reason than the competition from Ardbeg. The official line from Laphroaig has always been that there never was a change and it's the same today as it used to be.

But really, the only way to tell the difference is a head-to-head tasting: an old bottle against a new one. I haven't done that; but I have had some bottles that I thought were rather mild, especially a few years ago. The difference between the OB 10 and the MMD 10 was memorable, and I think part of the reason MMD annoyed Allied so much.

Don't underestimate the psychological factors though. You only have your first Laphroaig once. You sometimes come to crave that peaty phenolic finish - many malt lovers do gravitate towards the peatier whiskys - and then find that memory is quite capable of embellishing a flavor. People are said to have short memories for flavors and aromas, by nature. Although our sense memory for whiskies is likely to have become above average through paying closer attention, naming the flavors and aromas, and practice(!).

This post by Johanna illustrates both the view that "Laphroaig has changed" and the caution that "perception is tricky". The thread began a little over a year ago when a poster tried Laphroaig for the first time and finding it horrible wondered if people ever come to like such a taste...

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From: Johanna© ( snipped-for-privacy@magma.ca) Subject: Re: Newbie Laphroaig Question Newsgroups: alt.drinks.scotch-whisky Date: 2002-03-27 13:15:21 PST

And since you asked for stories of Laphroaig, I'll repost Peter Wood's reminiscings from the MALTS-L list. If Laphroaig was that hard on you, read this and be thankful that it's not 1959...

"My first dram of Laphroaig (indeed, of any malt) was on Hogmanay 1959, and I purchased my first bottle of Laphroaig some 10 years later in Dunedin (home of the late lamented Lammerlaw). Magnificent stuff that hooked me on malt whisky for life. I cannot forget the sensory impact of Laphroaig as it was then, so powerful was the "iodine" aroma that I likened it to a blast of iodoform. No way would I say that about the dumbed-down modern Laphroaig, and I will argue strongly against anyone who suggests that the years have damaged my olfactory and gustatory abilities. Yeh, yeh - I can hear gen-X muttering about another old fogey who thinks that the 1950-60s were the good ole days. Well they weren't, those days were mean, deprived and dirty, but by god - the Laphroaig was good.

...Real Laphroaig was a wolf from the wilds, pull the cork and it would be at your throat with feral ferocity; open a modern 10y and you'll be lucky if it gives your toes a rough licking. But there are those who can be turned on by a tongue on the toes, I'm told." -- Peter Wood

(As an epilogue to this quote, the posting thread took quite the humorous turn with a Swede then asking Peter if he remembered the first time he saw a woman's breast and suggesting that the sight was no longer as exciting now as it was that "first time". Peter retorted by saying that he was breast fed but doesn't have clear memories of the experience...)

Johanna

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Good luck with the Cask Strength. I'm envious, that version has never been available here. So I'm letting my imagination embellish it...

Bart

And that is the case for the prosecution?

funny -- I'd always read that olfactory memories were among the deeper-seated. there's certainly no mistaking the ability of the human memory to react many years after a poisoning to the same flavor profile (ask anyone who drank way too much of a particular liquor in his teens). indeed, taste memory would intuitively be an evolutionary advantage.

then again, I freely admit I haven't done any real research. do you have some good papers to which to point me for an overview of the academic thinking on olfactory memory and discrimination?

You should find many papers documenting the loss of taste receptors with age. It is universally acknowledged.

-- Larry