Laphroaig, despite being the biggest-selling Islay whisky, doesn’t mess around with many special edition bottlings. The distillery has a solid core range, an occasional selection of older and more expensive bottlings, and a few travel retail exclusives, but it...

Laphroaig, despite being the biggest-selling Islay whisky, doesn’t mess around with many special edition bottlings. The distillery has a solid core range, an occasional selection of older and more expensive bottlings, and a few travel retail exclusives, but it focuses almost all of its special-edition efforts on a single bottle each year: Laphroaig Càirdeas.

Care Chase?

Back in 2008, Laphroaig decided to fully embrace its fan club – the Friends of Laphroaig (FoL) – and launched Càirdeas (pronounced a bit like ‘care chase’) as a yearly bottling to celebrate its existence. Uncoincidentally, its name is gaelic for ‘friendship’ and it is launched at Fèis Ìle (the annual Islay Festival of Music and Malt) every year, the time when the distillery has more Friends visiting than at any other time.

However, bucking the trend of other distilleries on the island, it’s not specifically a festival bottling. It’s the yearly Friends of Laphroaig release, and as such it makes its way slowly around the world, available from the Laphroaig webshop exclusively for FoL members, as well as popping up on the shelf in markets they can’t ship to.

There’s been an array of releases over the years, each showing off the distillery’s focus of the moment. While they started out with more interesting vattings of casks, they have become a little less complex in recent years, focusing on fan favourites and finishes.

Laphroaig Càirdeas annual releases so far…

Year	Whisky	ABV	Notes
2008	Laphroaig Càirdeas	55%	Quarter casks finished in first-fill bourbon plus a pair of sherry butts
2009	Laphroaig Càirdeas 12yo	57.5%	Ex-Maker’s Mark casks
2010	Laphroaig Càirdeas Master Edition	57.3%	50% ex-bourbon hogsheads (11yo), 50% first-fill ex-bourbon (15, 17 and 19yo)
2011	Laphroaig Càirdeas Ileach Edition	50.5%	Dunnage-matured, first-fill ex-Maker’s Mark casks, 8yo.
2012	Laphroaig Càirdeas Origin	51.2%	50% casks of the 2008 Cairdeas left to mature for a further four years, 50% 7yo fully matured in quarter casks
2013	Laphroaig Càirdeas Port Wood Edition	51.3%	Bourbon matured finished in port casks
2014	Laphroaig Càirdeas Bottled 2014	51.5%	First-fill bourbon finished in Amontillado sherry hogsheads
2015	Laphroaig Càirdeas 200th Anniversary Edition	51.5%	100% barley floor-malted at Laphroaig, matured in ex-bourbon casks
2016	Laphroaig Càirdeas Madeira Cask	51.6%	Ex-bourbon finished in Madeira casks
2017	Laphroaig Càirdeas Cask Strength Quarter Cask	57.2%	Undiluted bottling of Laphroaig Quarter Cask
2018	Laphroaig Càirdeas Fino Cask	51.8%	First-fill bourbon finished in Fino sherry casks
2019	Laphroaig Càirdeas Cask Strength Triple Wood	59.5%	Undiluted bottling of Laphroaig Triple Wood
2020	Laphroaig Càirdeas Port & Wine Casks	52%	Ex-bourbon and second-refill ruby port casks, married and finished in ex-red wine casks.
2021	Laphroaig Càirdeas Pedro Ximénez Casks	58.9%	American oak, then quarter casks then European-oak PX hogsheads
2022	Laphroaig Càirdeas Warehouse 1	52.2%	All matured in warehouse #1 by the sea
2023	Laphroaig Càirdeas White Port and Madeira	52.3%	Three-quarters finished in second-fill madeira casks, one quarter from first-fill port casks mostly white port

Chase the Rainbow

Images grabbed from the US TTB Public COLA Registry My collection of the annual releases, complete as of 2021

Other Laphroaig Càirdeas Releases

Along with the annual release, there have been a couple of other releases under the Laphroaig Càirdeas name:

Year	Whisky	Notes
2008	Laphroaig Càirdeas 30 Year Old	60% sherry and 40% bourbon, vatted and finished in ex-bourbon. Only 1536 bottles.
2017	Laphroaig Càirdeas 15 Year Old	2012 vintage. Ex-bourbon.

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