Review #1260 – Lairds 4yr Single Cask Apple Brandy 2015 Steves Selection

This is a single cask of brandy distilled by Laird’s in New Jersey. Selected by Steve’s Wine and Liquor in Madison, WI, this cask was bottled after 49 months of aging at cask strength, with no coloring or filtering.

Review #1260 | AmericanBrandy Review #56

Distiller: Lairds

Bottler: Lairds

Selection: Steves

ABV: 65.05% ABV

Age: 4 Years

Nose: Sweet creme brûlée, honey, apple pie. Clove, cinnamon, lovely nuttiness. No ethanol after a standard rest. Sweet, surprisingly good complexity.

Taste: Medium mouth feel. Some heat. Toffee, almonds, apple pie. Vanilla bean, leather, tobacco, faint cocoa. Really nice.

Finish: Long but searingly hot. There’s the ABV. Apples, clove, vanilla, some honey.

Overall: Absolutely amazing until the finish where the ABV shows off its power. With a couple more years in the barrel to tame this, I bet these will become phenomenal bottlings. In the meantime, though, I’ll be buying several more of these to test cask variation and see how age affects these over the coming months and years. Lairds is a house to watch.

Thanks for reading!

Rank: 6

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Decoded:

1 | Disgusting | So bad I poured it out.

2 | Poor | I wouldn’t consume by choice.

3 | Bad | Multiple flaws.

4 | Sub-par | Not bad, but many things I’d rather have.

5 | Good | Good, just fine.

6 | Very Good | A cut above.

7 | Great | Well above average

8 | Excellent | Really quite exceptional.

9 | Incredible | An all time favorite

10 | Perfect | Perfect