Bowmore 18 Year

Beautiful, heavy legs in the glass after a twirl, and just the start of lace when left alone for 10 minutes. It does the job of looking like something I'll want to drink. Nose is rich and inviting, but I have to work for it. After a lot of time in the glass and a lot of trips to the nose, the generalized "I like this, it smells yummy" finally resolves into identifiable parts. First there's dark cocoa powder and Bing cherries, then a transition to a slightly dirty oolong tea and moss covered sea rocks. Worth the effort, and I'm glad I didn't get impatient and move too quickly to the taste. And about that taste - the nose intimates you'll need to take your time with this and the palate confirms the directive. First taste is rich, creamy and slightly oily, but not mouth-coating. Dark treacle, roasted walnuts, toasted milk bread with a light dusting of demerara sugar. Salt shows up mid-palate, shifting away from sweet and combining with the peat smoke to do a play on a light pancetta. Close is clean and semi-brief, flashing those cherries from earlier, a dash of dark cocoa and letting the salt linger until the end. You won't mistake this for an old Mortlach or Ledaig, but the savory is a nice twist, and is what sets this apart from a lot of otherwise good, unobjectionable, but mostly unmemorable, older-aged whisky at premium prices. I will note that my first taste of this was in the Bowmore bar. Gazing out that giant window overlooking the bay may have had an outsized impact on how I felt about the whisky I held in my hand. But I'm sure that's marketing as well, and in this case, it worked. I won't be buying another bottle because the cost to return just isn't there for me. But I'll always have my eye out for a bottle behind the bar.

Comparing this to the last dram from my bottle of 15 year. Honey and malt dominate the nose with only a hint of peat smoke. Rich and briney on the palate. Much more savoury than the 15. Honey, cereal and lots of spice. Exceptional balanced and complex. Finish is lengthy with lots of char and bourbon notes. The age has really tamed the smoke on this and cranked up the barrel effects. I didn't love the 15 and always found it a little uneven. This on the other hand is a bottle I will be savouring for a long time.

Solid, balanced fruit and smoke