Loch Lomond Distillery Edition 9
Summer Shutdown | 56.3% ABV
Score: 8/10
Something special.
TL;DR
Inchmurrin on steroids
Changing habits.
I mentioned in my last review of the Springbank 12 Cask Strength and the Hazelburn Oloroso that I had cut back significantly on my whisky purchases in recent months following years of spending fairly excessively on bottles.
The £200+ purchase of those two Springbanks alongside a core range ten year old was the turning point and the moment I realised that this couldn’t go on. I’ve never been reckless enough to get into any debt over my whisky buying habit. Monthly bills, regular expenses and fun activities with my family and friends have always taken priority, but after that pretty much every left-over pound at the end of the month has been spent on whisky. Savings? What are they?
That dopamine hit when you click the buy button, when the bottle arrives on your doorstep, and again when the cork is popped is a hard habit to kick. Not to mention the FOMO when an exciting new release that everybody is talking about becomes available.
In truth, this has been my default mode since midway through 2019 and it gathered pace through the covid years. The problem with that type of purchasing behaviour is that I was neglecting my future. I have a workplace pension that I have been paying in for twenty years now and will continue to do so, but as I approach forty at the end of this year I have started to think more and more about the future and my retirement plans. I also have a young daughter who has just started school and I think a lot about her future and how I’d like to support her when she gets to an age where she wants to learn to drive, go to university or buy her first home.
The state age for retirement in the UK will be at least 68 by the time I get there, and I don’t want to work that long. I have a job in IT which I tolerate rather than love. In all honesty, the more technology invades our lives the less time I want to spend with it. I envy anybody who had a passion for something and is able to make it their career, or had the guts to pivot to something else midway through their life, but I kind of fell into my line of work when I left school. I didn’t really have a clue what I wanted from life and I’m pretty much stuck there now. Trying to change careers at this stage of life with a family and a mortgage and no other skills feels impossible. I simply couldn’t afford to start at the bottom again.
My parents gave me and my brothers and sisters a wonderful upbringing, but there was never a lot of money around and since they reached retirement age they have heavily relied on their state pension. I see how much they have to think about everything they spend during their retirement and I want something more comfortable for me and my wife.
If I want to retire as early as possible I need to be more savvy with my money. I need to grow my modest savings and investments for both mine and my family’s future, and buying whisky at the rate I have been has to give way in order for that to happen. I love whisky and will continue to buy bottles, but instead of three, four or even five bottles a month, I am looking to purchase one. Some months I will be buying nothing at all and others I may buy two. It’s all about having more of a balance and a healthier relationship with it.
I love the whisky community, but you don’t need to have more bottles than anybody else to be a part of it. Whether you have five or five hundred on the shelf you are just as welcome. You don’t have to have tried every expression from every distillery and have a room full of unicorn bottles. I think I lost sight of that at times.
I’m also aware that I can’t talk about passion for things and then suggest that being led by that passion was in any way a mistake. I find myself fortified with a well-stocked and varied whisky shelf that’ll do me for years and I’m empowered by the knowledge and understanding that the exploration afforded me. That’s before we even admit to the raw thrill of collecting each new purchase, bottle by bottle, only to discover that it’s true - no two were ever the same. Purchasing more whisky than we need, for many of us, is very much part of the joy.
But there are also many eager whisky fans that really have to agonise over every purchase - yet they’re still a welcome and valuable part of our communal exploration. Trying everything that drops is not a prerequisite for loving whisky, nor for being part of it all. Besides, when we find a good community - we’re experts at sharing.
For me, as a result of my years of spending, I am fortunate to have a decent number of bottles on the shelf that are almost exclusively whiskies I have loved so much I grabbed a backup. I know that I am going to have a great time reacquainting myself with them. I have already opened my back up bottle of the first whisky I reviewed for Dramface, an 8 year old Balmenach from Alistair Walker and a bottle of the excellent batch of Kilkerran 16 year old from 2023. I’ve now got my eye on a 14 year old Glen Elgin from Signatory’s Unchill-filtered range, but it’s proving harder to open such was the love I have for that bottle. I pick it up, look at it, and then back on the shelf it goes.
I’ll get there. It’s the little changes.
Review
Loch Lomond Summer Shutdown, Distillery Edition #9, Unpeated, straight-neck stills, low collection strength, 500 bottles only, ex-bourbon, 56.3% ABV
£65 direct from distillery website only
Since the Springbank purchases of June this year I have picked up two bottles. One was the Glen Scotia 12 year old, which I also reviewed, and the other was this Loch Lomond. I have purchased every single one of these distillery editions and they are such wonderful and good value whisky experiences that I am unlikely to stop doing that.
All of them have been from ex-bourbon casks that allows the liquid Michael Henry gets to play with to shine, and showcases the various types of spirit the distillery can produce. My favourite up to this point was number three, which was called Extra-Long Fermentation and had a fermentation time of three weeks. I wish I’d bought a replacement for that one - it was a special whisky.
But here we have another edition using long fermentation. In this case the fermentation was between two and three weeks using M and MX strains of yeast and has been called Summer Shutdown - which is when these fermentation experiments take place. From a little research I gather the M yeast strain was introduced in 1952 by DCL and MX is a faster and more efficient version of that strain and was introduced more recently.
This edition has a ten year age statement and was matured in three first-fill ex-bourbon casks producing just five hundred bottles at 56.3% ABV and priced at £65. At time of writing there are still more than a hundred bottles in stock, but sadly it is UK only.
Score: 8/10
Something special.
TL;DR
Inchmurrin on steroids
Nose
Green olives and linseed oil with white fruits galore: peach, white grape, freshly sliced pear, honeydew melon with caramel and vanilla. It’s vibrant and leaps out of the glass.
Palate
Honey, vanilla cream, orchard fruit and lemon really stand out on the palate as the main notes and a large teaspoon of water is potent at bringing out more flavour from this whisky. Although we aren’t dealing with Chardonnay yeast this time, there is a lemony fizz across the palate along with some light peppery spice. There’s a little drying oak, but it’s not too assertive before we get sour grapefruit coming through. As it finishes, vanilla and coconut bounty bars appear amongst the fruit and makes it a really nice ending to each sip. The slightly drying nature of the dram sends you back in for more.
The Dregs
These Distillery Editions from Loch Lomond never let us down. Every few months I look forward to seeing what Michael has put together for the latest one, safe in the knowledge it will be a cracking whisky experience. The latest edition is another beautifully fruity and spirit forward expression.
I’ve looked through my sample pile and was pleased to find 5cl of the previous long fermentation edition in there. From memory it was the better dram, but sampling them side by side made me realise that they are really not far apart from each other. The previous one was perhaps a little sweeter, but that’s about it. They both have a similar fruity profile and that distinctive effervescence.
Thanks to a generous whisky friend who has sent me a sample of every distillery edition to date I will be able to try each and every one side by side. A small group of us are going to do that together soon. Whisky friends really are the best. With us currently clocking nine editions, there might be a few sore heads the next morning though.
I hope the preamble wasn’t too depressing, it certainly wasn’t meant to be. If you’re still enjoying your path of whisky discovery, and that involves you fast-tracking on the purchases, for now, then provided you’re operating within your personal means there’s no harm in that. It’s a true pleasure. But I predict quite a number of whisky botherers will have had similar epiphanies in recent times and I believe there is more to the slowdown in whisky buying than the cost of living, although that will of course be a factor. Many of us have been buying bottle after bottle having found ourselves stuck at home during the pandemic and continued that pattern before reassessing our relationship with whisky. If that sounds familiar, please share in the comments.
For me, as long as I have nice bottles like this on hand to sit back and enjoy, I will be a happy boy into my forties and beyond.
Score: 8/10
Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. RT
-
Dramface is free.
Its fierce independence and community-focused content is funded by that same community. We don’t do ads, sponsorships or paid-for content. If you like what we do you can support us by becoming a Dramface member for the price of a magazine.
However, if you’ve found a particular article valuable, you also have the option to make a direct donation to the writer, here: buy me a dram - you’d make their day. Thank you.
For more on Dramface and our funding read our about page here.
