Lounge Lizards This Week: Aladino Classic Elegante, Kirkland Signature Single Malt Scotch Whisky, Honduran lancero, Police.

[El Presidente]

The lizards pair the by JRE with sixteen year aged Kirkland Signature Single Malt Scotch Whisky. The guys return to lanceros with a Honduran puro, they learn how Pagoda called the police on himself and lost yet another cigar case and they answer some listener email.

 

 

[rabidraccoon]

Well done as usual, fun episode. I always enjoy Aladino cigars but I’m never blown away to the point where I want to buy a box. I keep them in my rotation though maybe one day I will pull the trigger on a box. Regarding the whisky, if the Kirkland one says “Single Malt Scotch Whisky” it legally must be from one single distillery. If they were blending malt whiskies from multiple producers as yall speculated, they would have to label it as a “blended malt scotch whisky.” 

As to how the Independent bottlers (IBs) operate, they essentially buy casks from distillers or brokers. These are usually “off” casks or surplus from the distilleries output. For example, Diageo uses a ton of Caol Ila for the Johnnie Walker Black Label label blend and for the distillery’s official bottlings (OB). The blenders are looking for a certain profile and if there are casks which don’t have that profile or can’t be blended into the products, they will often sell the casks onwards. This is based on production and demand. You could easily get your hands on a cask of Teaninich but getting Diageo to part with a cask of Lagavulin will probably not happen. There are other odd ways casks can end up as IBs too. Ex: I have a 1994 Ardbeg IB, but Ardbeg was not in full production at that time. Their owners would just get the staff at Laphroaig to go down the road and periodically do a production run so the washbacks didn’t dry up and crack and the place stayed in good working order. Whatever they produced was just sold off as it had no product purpose and wasn’t enough quantity for any sort of official use. In this case, with the massive volume Costco does, I would guess they just have a purchase contract to have Diageo/Chivas (or whoever) supply them with some quantity of 16 year old Glen Ord (or whatever it is) every year. 

[LizardGizmo]

2 hours ago, rabidraccoon said:

Well done as usual, fun episode. I always enjoy Aladino cigars but I’m never blown away to the point where I want to buy a box. I keep them in my rotation though maybe one day I will pull the trigger on a box. Regarding the whisky, if the Kirkland one says “Single Malt Scotch Whisky” it legally must be from one single distillery. If they were blending malt whiskies from multiple producers as yall speculated, they would have to label it as a “blended malt scotch whisky.” 
As to how the Independent bottlers (IBs) operate, they essentially buy casks from distillers or brokers. These are usually “off” casks or surplus from the distilleries output. For example, Diageo uses a ton of Caol Ila for the Johnnie Walker Black Label label blend and for the distillery’s official bottlings (OB). The blenders are looking for a certain profile and if there are casks which don’t have that profile or can’t be blended into the products, they will often sell the casks onwards. This is based on production and demand. You could easily get your hands on a cask of Teaninich but getting Diageo to part with a cask of Lagavulin will probably not happen. There are other odd ways casks can end up as IBs too. Ex: I have a 1994 Ardbeg IB, but Ardbeg was not in full production at that time. Their owners would just get the staff at Laphroaig to go down the road and periodically do a production run so the washbacks didn’t dry up and crack and the place stayed in good working order. Whatever they produced was just sold off as it had no product purpose and wasn’t enough quantity for any sort of official use. In this case, with the massive volume Costco does, I would guess they just have a purchase contract to have Diageo/Chivas (or whoever) supply them with some quantity of 16 year old Glen Ord (or whatever it is) every year. 

Great note and feedback, thanks. I’ll share this on an upcoming episode!

[TomsRibs210]

Another Michelin star episode.

[bredy387]

The pairing of that 16-year-old Kirkland Scotch with the lizards sounds interesting. I love how they always manage to get into crazy situations like the Pagoda one losing a cigar case again is just too relatable.

[Shakey]

Picked up 3 Aladino Classic lanceros and 3 Robustos to try based on the great review here. I'll try them after a few weeks resting at 62%.