"The Godfather Of Islay Whisky" By The Godfather Of Sponsored Content

Don’t you wish you were there right now? (Photo courtesy of Lagavulin)

A couple of months I was asked to write sponsored content for Robb Report about one of my favorite Scotch whiskies, Lagavulin. “Sponsored content,” if you’re not familiar, means rather than having the publication pay me to write up my insights about a subject or product, the brand pays the publication to pay me to write something nice about the brand. The publication and the brand and I all collaborate to produce something that reads, well, like this -> CLICK HERE TO READ IT <-.

It wasn’t much of a problem coming up with nice things to say about Lagavulin and its various expressions, because it’s the single malt that led me to discover single malts. Alas, Lagavulin’s agenda for the sponsored content didn’t include a personal anecdote about how I discovered Lagavulin, so I’ll lay it on you now. Back in the late ‘90s, when Scotch whisky was just beginning to make a big comeback, I got invited to a lot of seminars and tastings from Johnnie Walker and Dewar’s. I wasn’t in the booze biz at the time, but I was a 20-something white dude who had an Upper West Side address and probably subscribed to the right magazines or something, so I was their target audience.

Johnnie Walker’s schtick was to have us taste various components of Black Label and then taste the blend, the idea being that the whole was greater than the sum of the parts. If you’re wondering where Black Label gets its smokiness from, at least a little of it is from Lagavulin (although more of it, I believe, is from fellow Diageo distilleries Cardhu and Caol Ila).

I don’t know who got the bright idea to taste us on Lagavulin before Johnnie Black. Maybe most people preferred the blend to the single malt — as I recall, the tastings were pretty large affairs, with dozens if not hundreds of attendees, and Islay malts were still generally considered pretty weird and out-there at the time. But all I can tell you is that after one taste of Lagavulin’s smoky, peaty, iodiney goodness, I was pretty much done with Black Label, and blends in general for that matter — Lagavulin really opened my eyes and my palate to the wonder of single malts. I wound up giving blends short shrift for years. Which is a shame, because as far as blends go, JW Black is a really good one. But it ain’t no Lagavulin, I can tell you that.

And that’s my Lagavulin story. And if you haven’t clicked on it yet, -> HERE’S THE LINK AGAIN <= to my Lagavulin sponsored content!