Nose: Ancient, fusty oak cupboards, waxed for 80 years. A saline-tinged smoke note - grandma's sitting room with an open fire burning pine-logs. Candied orange peel, bramble jam and brown bread toast, dried dates and figs. Creaking stairs leading up to a medicine cabinet in an old, damp bathroom reeking of iodine swabs, oil of wintergreen liniment and sulphur powder. Palate: A soft but firm arrival rooted in the flavours of dark fruit and berries, but stained by the patina of vegetative decay and brackish smoke. More smoky notes quickly surface in the development with an iodine and menthol astringency. There is a red berry/grape sweetness but the mouth-feel is both oily and dry - almost styptic. Coal tar and a tiny salt licorice note. Finish: Medium/long: Smoky, briny, sour peat and bitter citrus leading to a dark chocolate aftertaste with endless ashen smoke and a mist of menthol. Ah, Bowmore ... the enigma of Bowmore. How I love you and despise you. The colour is deep mahogany, due to the outrageous amount of E150a that has been added. Yes, it's a TRE expression and that means fool the naive customer with colour and chill-filter the life out of the juice. Shame on you, Bowmore - you should be leading the industry, not enshrining the crime. The nose here is old, but corrupted. There is a musty foetid quality that speaks more eloquently of decay than maturity, and there is something creepy in its tension between alluring and repellent. One moment I get the deep, old oak and peat-reek heart, then the next something ghastly and sulphurous is creeping from the gloomy moonlit salt waters of Loch Indaal into the corner of my darkened room. The palate is cereal sour, brackish and slightly metallic but cloaked by very sweet sherry (it's astonishing how well these opposites cancel each other out in the palate). Sharp and bright at one moment, then dull and cold, then hot and deep. The regular Bowmore 18 has an elegant and staid complexity. It's an expression full of walnuts, old leather, pipe tobacco and orange marmalade. It is the good child, this is the evil twin locked in the cellar. I'm conflicted as to how to rate this - one part of me loves its eldritch weirdness, the other thinks it's just a ham-fisted failure, another in the long line of failures created by Bowmore over the years. It is deep, certainly, but is it really complex or just a plain mess? I can't bring myself to rate this as "Good", so it slots in at the next rung down. The regular price in Australia is $185, which is laughable. I found it for $110 which is just barely good value. Oh - a dash of water brings it successfully to its knees and greatly aids enjoyment - highly, highly recommended. It's one of the few peated and heavily sherried whiskies I can think of where water does not produce rubber or plastic notes but actually assuages the peat, thereby greatly enhancing the profile, particularly by balancing all that brine with some sweetness. "Above Average" : 81/100 (3 stars)