Lagavulin (laga-VOO-lin) sits on Islay's storm-lashed south coast between Ardbeg and Laphroaig, where illicit distilling dates to the 1740s and farmer John Johnston made it legal in 1816. The whitewashed warehouses have guarded Lagavulin Bay ever since, in a cove once frequented by pirates. Its defining figure was Sir Peter Mackie, who inherited the distillery in 1889, built the White Horse blend around it, and after losing the agency to sell Laphroaig's whisky in 1908, spitefully built a second distillery inside Lagavulin's grounds — Malt Mill — to copy his neighbor's style. He couldn't replicate it. What makes Lagavulin taste like Lagavulin is stubbornly its own: water from the Solum Lochs running over peat, heavily peated malt from the Port Ellen maltings, fermentation for an unusually long 55 hours, and the slowest distillation on Islay through broad, onion-shaped stills, producing a spirit that's weighty and oily enough to carry both dry kiln smoke and coastal iodine. The 16 Year Old is the benchmark — arguably the most famous Islay single malt on earth, and Ron Swanson's drink of choice on Parks and Recreation, a fictional devotion that became a real partnership with Nick Offerman and a series of Offerman Editions. The range runs from the 8 Year through the annual 12 Year Cask Strength, the Pedro Ximénez-finished Distillers Edition, and older statements at 21, 25, and beyond. Now owned by Diageo, still unmistakably itself.

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