There are bottles you buy to drink, and there are bottles you buy to sit with. The Lagavulin 1997, released as part of Diageo's Prima & Ultima Fourth Release, is — impossibly — both. Distilled twenty-five years ago on the southern shore of Islay, where the Atlantic throws salt and seaweed against the old warehouse walls, this is whisky shaped by patience and place. At £2,400, it asks you to take it seriously. At 50.7% ABV, it demands you do.
I should say upfront: I have a complicated relationship with collector's releases. Too many of them trade on scarcity rather than quality, dressing up ordinary liquid in expensive packaging. The Prima & Ultima series, to its credit, has largely avoided that trap. Each edition pulls single casks from Diageo's portfolio of distilleries, and the Lagavulin entries have consistently been among the strongest. This 1997 vintage is no exception.
Twenty-five years is a long time for an Islay malt to spend in wood. The peat that defines Lagavulin's new make — that muscular, medicinal smoke — doesn't disappear over a quarter century, but it changes. It softens. It becomes atmospheric rather than assertive, more bonfire on a distant beach than kiln at full blast. What replaces the youthful intensity is depth: the kind of layered complexity that only decades of slow extraction from oak can produce. The cask strength bottling at 50.7% ensures nothing has been diluted or compromised on the way to the glass.
This is a whisky that belongs to the Islay tradition of long-aged, cask-strength single malts — a category that has exploded in both prestige and price over the past decade. At twenty-five years old, you're drinking something distilled before the current whisky boom even began, when Lagavulin was respected but not yet the cult name it has become. There's something quietly moving about that.
Tasting Notes
Specific tasting notes for this bottling haven't been independently verified, so I'll hold off on inventing them. What I can tell you is that a quarter-century-old Lagavulin at cask strength will carry the distillery's signature coastal peat character, transformed by time into something richer and more contemplative than the standard 16-year-old expression. Expect the ABV to deliver weight and presence without harshness — Lagavulin at this age tends to wear its strength gracefully.
The Verdict
Is it worth £2,400? That depends entirely on what you're looking for. As an investment, the Prima & Ultima releases have held their value well. As a drinking experience, this is elite-tier Islay whisky — the kind of bottle that reminds you why Lagavulin earned its reputation in the first place. It's not trying to reinvent the wheel. It's showing you what happens when a great distillery's spirit is given the time and the cask to become something extraordinary. I'm giving it 8.5 out of 10: a remarkable whisky that falls just short of perfection only because the price puts it beyond what most of us can justify for a regular pour. But for a special occasion — a milestone, a memory, an evening where nothing else will do — this is the bottle.
Best Served
Neat, in a Glencairn, with five minutes of air and absolutely no distractions. If you've spent this much on a bottle, you owe it the courtesy of your full attention. A few drops of water will open it up — at 50.7%, it can handle it — but taste it at full strength first. Pour it on a cold evening, somewhere quiet. Let it breathe. Let yourself breathe with it.
