Bowmore tasting evening at The Oak Barrel, Sydney, June 26th 2019: Whisky #5 Nose: Brine, seaweed, anchovies, citrus fruit and brackish vanilla. A dry resinous woody quality along with the ubiquitous Bowmore citrus characteristic. The smoke has a peculiarly captured and constrained character. I don't quite know how to explain it - it's as though most of the smoke has been artificially removed. Some dark floral hues show up, but salt dominates. Palate: A briny, spicy, sweet, hot and smoky arrival that extends through the development becoming dry as it unfolds. I could be describing mezcal instead of whisky. The development is disappointingly simple - lemon, brine and tannins ... and more brine. There are some pleasant smoke notes but on the whole it's pretty one-dimensional and most oddly it's also mild in overall character. Finish: Medium/long. Salty and dry evolving into a dusty cocoa aftertaste. This is a very tightly locked down and overly salty whisky. With water the character expands and gains some much-needed sweetness and balance ... until it suddenly falls apart. This was the first of a series of expressions intended to explore the “four pillars” of the Bowmore profile, and it focuses on salt (a pillar of salt ... hmm). However this whole approach seems fundamentally flawed to me. If these four characteristics are equally important then why create an intentionally unbalanced expression? It has some interesting features but for me it was like a flawed version of Tempest No. 6, and the killer is that this below average whisky is more expensive than Bowmore 18. "Adequate" : 74/100 (2.25 stars)