Bowmore 25 Year

★★★★½ Bowmore Vertical 4 of 7 That's good and expensive! I don't think I'll ever be rich enough to afford a whisky of that value. More expensive than the 25 Small Batch, I unfortunately found it less interesting. It is an extremely well-balanced whisky where the flavours complement each other perfectly, but there is not only the WOW effect that I felt a year and a half ago with its namesake.

So smooth and good it’s hard to believe.

Hmm, peat, nutts vanilla, slightly sulfuric / tanninic sherry. Initially I thought slightly overwooded. Unlike some drams where the things that bug me get more and more prominent, this whiskey I settle into more and more. Prunes, dark fruit, very interesting dram. It's good but I'm slightly torn on how good, I think it's one you really need a bottle to work through over time perhaps. Its more complex and has more depth than the 18 from memory but not sure about the balance of certain aspects. By the end I was thinking definitely a 4.25.