Loch Lomond Distillery Edition 6
Single Blend Scotch Whisky | 56.9% ABV
Score: 6/10
Good stuff.
TL;DR
Still delicious, but my memory plays tricks
Sick of me raving about Scotland yet?
I squeezed a lot of whisky experiences into my last two trips to my favourite whisky’s Motherland. Yet, this really has less to do with the whisky, it’s more about the experiences. A people story, if you like, isn’t it always?
I know I may sound like a broken record, but this story starts back in November, around the time of my epic trip to Glasgow Whisky Festival. This was the first time I had travelled to Scotland alone; purely for whisky’s sake. Of course, over the week I stayed there, it quickly became more about the people I met and the adventures I embarked upon, always accompanied.
This stay in Glasgow was also an occasion to meet a few lads from the Dramface team. Wally, of course, who it seems is basically the city’s deputy mayor for whisky related stuff; but also the boys who, over the course of the weekend, would become known as the Dramface Five Nations crew: Ramsay the Welshman, Dougie the Scotsman, Hamish the Irishman, me the Frenchman and our website mechanic, Jackie, as the Englishman.
We’d end up attending all of the weekend’s events and meeting at the Good Spirits Company on Bath Street in the morning - read noon - before the blind tasting on the Sunday. The walk from the shop to the casino where the tasting was held was long and slow, and punctuated by stops for food, coffee, and my first try of the cursed beverage that is Irn-Bru. It still puzzles me how a small country like Scotland could be responsible for both the best and the worst drink in the world.
Place your pitchforks to the side though, as my opinion on Irn-Bru is not today’s subject. Earlier during the weekend, just after shoving our bellies full of Indian delicacies at Akbar’s, quite a bunch of us headed to the Bon Accord for after-festival drinks - because why not put another cherry on top of this beautiful too-much-of-the-good-stuff-already cake?
A legendary evening was had by all people in attendance and I took it all in, navigating through different groups of people as the night progressed. I never want to advocate for overconsumption of alcohol of course, but I’m guilty of it from time to time, and that was (along with the Independent Spirits festival weekend this March in Edinburgh) one of the recent times it has happened to me.
Time flew by at ‘The Bon’ and I was on cloud nine, as we often are when our blood to whisky ratio approaches parity. I remember chatting with Jackie in front of the bar and reminiscing about the whiskies we had on the previous day, at an “Under-the-Table” tasting. My favourite of the bunch, surprisingly to me, was what LLG Master Blender Michael Henry brought along: an advance sample of his new Loch Lomond Distillery Edition. I was amazed at its freshness and fruitiness, which was off the charts.
So there I was chatting with Jackie, moaning that I couldn’t get Loch Lomond’s Distillery Editions - as they aren’t able to ship them to France yet - and being the legend that he is, he offered to buy me one, and give it to me the next time I came over to Alba.
That’s a generous offer in and of its own, but instead of just handing him some cash, I suggested in the moment that I should get him a bottle in exchange. Now, what could I get Jackie that would be hard for him to get?
Well, I worked out how to get some Springbank into his hands. For which Springbank, you’ll need to tune in tomorrow, as that’ll be reviewed separately. Spoiler: it’s a beautiful thing.
It’s a shame that Jackie missed my second whisky trip to Scotland in March, he couldn’t make it north to Leith’s Independent Spirits Festival extravaganza. Instead, Wally appeared with this freshly muled Loch Lomond for me and he took away Jackie’s Springer. Probably to drink it, knowing Wally.
Review
Loch Lomond Distillery Edition 6, 8yo, Blended Scotch Whisky (Single Blend), 100% malted barley, 400 bottles, 56.9% ABV
£60 now sold out
Despite bringing back another suitcase full of exciting whisky from Scotland, this one was the first I opened after coming back.
It is a blend of column and straight-neck still distillate, all unpeated and 100% malted barley. This is technically a blended Scotch, but don’t be fooled by this terminology. The column still distillate is collected at a quite modest (for a continuous still) strength of 85%, leaving plenty of room for flavour to come through, and the straight-neck pot stills at Loch Lomond are a favourite of mine, because of the bright, floral and fruity spirit they produce.
As a quick sidenote, two more LL Distillery Editions have been released since (more on that in a moment!), but this one - Distillery Edition 6 - dates back to 2024.
400 bottles, no big outturn, all about the distillate. These distillery editions have Michael Henry’s signature all over them. They’re for us.
Score: 6/10
Good stuff.
TL;DR
Still delicious, but my memory plays tricks
Nose
Light, vibrant. Crackers and corn flakes. Ripe pears and a touch of apples. It says it’s unpeated, but somehow it feels borderline smoky? Café latte and roasted hazelnuts. With a bit more time, syrup-glazed pecans appear, along with a cinnamon-dosed apple pie. Vanilla-flavoured condensed milk as well, almost like oreo filling. Ice cream and grapefruit zest.
With water: I must admit it doesn’t change much to me - maybe a tad more nuts and oak. I prefer the nose undiluted.
Palate
Surprisingly mouth coating for a distillate that’s supposed to be on the light side. It has the same fresh and vibrant quality as the nose though. Breakfast cereal, malty bread, creamy vanilla and those hazelnuts from the nose.
With water: echoing the nose again, it gets spicier and dryer, but in hindsight doesn’t change that much.
The Dregs
This is a vastly different whisky from what I remember from Glasgow. Either I didn’t properly understand which distillery edition Michael presented us, or my palate was compromised, but it isn’t the tropical and citrus fruit bomb I remember it to be.
There may be more than one explanation for that.
You see, this “Under-the-Table” pre-festival tasting in November was a wild event with over sixty flavour hounds and Barflies squeezed into the upstairs whisky lounge in Glasgow’s Piper Bar. The format was that seven different companies brought along their wares - dealer’s choice - and shared them ahead of the festival; in the spirit of the old days of literal ‘under-the-table’ pours.
While this still happens, it can come off as an awkward and elitist practice - a for-those-in-the-know type thing. So, to take that out of the equation for the sixty attendees, Cadenhead’s, Springbank, White Peak, Ardnamurchan, Glencadam, Decadent Drinks and, of course, Loch Lomond brought anything they considered playful or special along to share on the day. Here’s the thing - it was in no particular order. We tasted them randomly - festival style.
This isn’t normal for a ‘tasting’. Usually, the pours are carefully curated, then selected in order of ABV - or density or smokiness or whatever logic that suits the host or the theme. As it played out, the Loch Lomond came in the middle of some really quite dense and moody whiskies such as a 23yo blended malt from Decadent drinks and an advance cask sample of the 10yo Amontillado finished (secondary maturation, actually) Springbank. As such, its fruitiness and brightness were very likely amped up in comparison to the others.
Today, I’m sitting with the bottle - as I do for almost every other review - enjoying it on its own. In that respect, it may have lost some of that contrast; that impact from the step-change compared to those that were before and immediately after in the line-up. On the day, this was almost like sipping a reset; a fruity glass of palate-cleansing brightness. While today it’s just me, the bottle and my thoughts. Maybe it’s missing all that fervour, chatter, buzz and tinsel.
Yet, there is another explanation for my puzzlement. The true reason - this time around, is thanks to an eagle-eyed sub-editor - thanks Mackie! - who knew it couldn’t be DE6 that was shared at the tasting, we uncovered something. In truth, this is the Occam’s Razor scenario - it isn’t the same whisky!
In all our excitement, I didn’t tell Jackie exactly which LL Distillery Edition I wanted, so he simply went ahead in the moment and ordered the one that was still available last November, this Edition 6. But what Michael Henry had brought to the under-the-table tasting was the blueprint for Distillery Edition 7, a different dram altogether! One that was, in the end, literally called “Tropical Refill”!
I opened the bottle expecting a burst of tropical fruitiness, so I was a bit perplexed when I got all those sweet undertones. I must admit, I was a little disappointed at first as I wanted to experience those fizzy, chardonnay yeast fruit bombs that Loch Lomond had become famous for in enthusiast circles. Disappointment didn’t last though, as I quickly realised that the whisky in my hands was just as good, in a different way.
This, truly, is an example of Loch Lomond being a shapeshifter distillery. With their unique still setup comprising of a grain complex, a malt ‘Coffey’ still, regular ‘swan neck’ pot stills and their signature ‘straight-neck’ pot stills with removeable rectifying plates. This, alongside peated and unpeated malt, different cut points, as well as Michael Henry’s tendency to try out different yeast strains and fermentation times: the distillery is either a giant laboratory or playground, depending on how you look at it.
As such, the distillery edition range reflects this vast panel of profiles, and they’re all going to be different from one another. And that’s great. Sure, I didn’t get the exact whisky that blew my mind in Glasgow, but I Bob Ross’d it, and this became a happy little accident.
I am very glad to have this on the shelf. I am also reminded never to trust an Englishman with any serious business. Unless it’s running the back-end of this website as slickly as he does…of course.
I’ll discuss the sharing of whisky a little more in tomorrow’s review of the Springbank, because I think that it - and of course the environments in which we share - can dramatically change our interpretations of whisky flavours.
That said, it is quite a tasty whisky. From my notes, you might think this comes in as a sweet whisky. It is not. Or rather, it isn’t too sweet. It definitely is balanced between the creamy, nutty, vanilla notes and the freshness and vibrancy, which, when combined, make for a very satisfying tasting experience and a quite moreish whisky. The score reflects its relative lack of complexity, but it feels like a very carefully assembled whisky where the blend is more than the sum of its parts. Something which is rarely achieved. It is a high 6/10, and I’m very happy to have this bottle for the upcoming summer months. As always here, the real assessment is in the words, not really the score.
I love these distillery editions from Loch Lomond. It really feels like Michael Henry’s playground, and we seem to enjoy similar whiskies, ones that are interesting both on a technical and sensorial aspect.
Well done Loch Lomond. Keep ’em coming.
For today’s musical pairing, I’ll have you listen to So Far From The Clyde, by guitar legend Mark Knopfler. Don’t know about you, but I sometimes feel like I’m too far from the Clyde.
Score: 6/10
Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. AF
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Other opinions on this:
Whiskybase
Whisky Maltcontent (YouTube)
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